In a season that has been about as disappointing as one can remember for the Boston Red Sox, there has been one bright shining light and that has been the performance of their young shortstop, Xander Bogaerts. Bogaerts has grown leaps and bounds in virtually every aspect of his game.

Boston had been going through shortstops on almost a yearly basis and it seemed as though ever since they traded Nomar Garciaparra, they had not had any sort of continuity at the position. Boston doesn’t need to search anymore because it looks like they have found their shortstop for years to come.

Bogaerts has improved defensively to the point where one feels very comfortable on any sort of ground ball that is hit to him. I love when he does the Derek Jeter play, jumping in the air and throwing from across his body. He is doing it on a regular basis. Boston seemed to have learned a lesson when they made the colossal mistake of moving him to third base last year to make room for Stephen Drew. Bogaerts never seemed to get it going after that.

Offensively, Bogaerts has gained a tremendous amount of confidence. He changed his batting stance a little bit and now his pitch recognition skills have gotten significantly better. He is now hitting balls the other way that he would have struck out on last year. That change in his stance has also resulted in him having one of the highest batting averages in the MLB since June. The fact that he wasn’t selected to the All-Star game was a travesty.

You can blame a lot of individual performances for the Red Sox being where they are, but Bogaerts isn’t a reason why at all.

Carter Roane is a Boston Red Sox writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter@CarterGRoane, “Like”him on Facebook or add him to your network on Google.