McAdam: It's early, but Michael Chavis inserting himself into AL ROY race

Over the winter, he was a bit part in the Prospect Industrial Complex, the seemingly year-round business which tracks, projects and lionizes the game's best prospects before they come close to having their first at-bats in the big leagues.

Thanks to Baseball America and countless other publications and sites, we know more about prospects than ever before -- their strengths and weaknesses, their skill sets, their expected impact and arrival date.

You could have spent days and days reading about Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Eloy Jimenez and so many others. You could see scouts projecting them as future superstars, read about their gaudy numbers in the minors and dream about what they might deliver once it was time for them to graduate to the majors.

Michael Chavis wasn't in this August group. Sure, he might have been considered by most to be one of the top position player prospects in the Red Sox organization. But that seemed to be damning with faint praise, since the Red Sox minor league system was ranked dead last by Baseball America.

And besides, hadn't Chavis's time come and gone? A year ago, he was banned for 80 games in the minors after violating baseball's PED guidelines. He had no real position, and given the Red Sox roster, no obvious place in the organization's future.

So when he popped a handful of homers in spring training, it was a nice story — and little more.

And yet, here we are, just shy of the one-third mark of the season, and Chavis has become a major figure for the 2019 Red Sox. A little more than a month into his big league career, he's hit more homers and knocked in more runs than any player on the roster since he arrived.

On Wednesday night, in a game the Red Sox seemed intent on throwing away -- they twice coughed up one-run leads -- Chavis delivered his biggest hit yet: a towering shot to left-center in the top of the 13th, finally giving the Sox a 6-5 victory over the stubborn Toronto Blue Jays.

For Chavis, it was his 10th homer in 30 games. He's slashing .287/.382/.585 and averaging nearly an RBI (25) per game.

He's moved past fluke. He went hitless for 19 at-bats earlier this month, and came out the other side. He couldn't catch up to some premium fastballs from the Houston's Garret Cole Friday night, and was humbled in the series opener, but came back to homer in the series finale.

Thirty games do not a major league career make. Ask Ted Cox, or Sam Horn or any number of Red Sox players who burst onto the scene like supernovas, only to soon burn up and crash.

It's early, but Chavis doesn't seem the type. For one, he's ultra-demanding of himself. When he finally snapped his hitless streak 10 days ago, he still wasn't satisfied and put himself through an hour of post-game work in the batting cage.

He makes adjustments. And despite a relentlessly positive demeanor that suggests "ah, shucks'' he's not intimidated by his surroundings. When it comes to his own ability, he's confident, bordering on cocky. And perhaps that's justified.

Certainly, he's won the confidence of his teammates, coaches and manager. In a little bit more than a month, he's hit everywhere from leadoff to cleanup to fifth, sixth and seventh.

And he's seemingly, never, ever rattled.

"He's been good,'' Alex Cora told reporters. "That's the thing with him -- regardless of how the game's been going, or the swings and misses, or when he shows some frustration, he got a hanging pitch and he put a good swing on it. He's got that power, just like Raffy (Devers) if they get a pitch up in the zone, they can handle it and hit it out of the ballpark.

"That's what he brings on a daily basis.''

He may not have had the hype or buildup that Guerrero has, but he's made more of an impact on his team. Surely, it's not entirely a coincidence that the Sox turned their season around last month in Tampa just as Chavis joined them.

Before Chavis arrived, the Sox were 6-13. Since he arrived, they've been 20-10.

None of which is to suggest that Chavis is necessarily going to have a better career than Guerrero or Jimenez.

But he's part of the Rookie of the Year conversation now, an inclusion that would have been unthinkable only a month ago.