The Red Sox hitter who has done the most lately -- even more than Mookie Betts and J.D. Martinez -- to make this season finally start to look like last season wasn’t even around for the Boston Red Sox in 2018. Michael Chavis had to wonder at the time if he would ever be around for them, after it was announced last April that he would serve an 80-game suspension because a PED known as Dehydrochlormethyltestosterone was found in his system. He said at the time he didn’t know how it got there, a common response when guys get caught.

Here is what the guy rated the top prospect in the Red Sox system tweeted at the time:

“I want to apologize for the negative attention brought to myself, my family, the Red Sox, our fans, and everyone who supports me.”

Now, 13 months later, Chavis is trying to live his baseball life again, and not an apology. He is having the career so far the Red Sox thought he might have and hoped he might have before his suspension; hoped he could still have after it. Suddenly, he is looking a little bit indispensable to the defending World Series champions, who keep trying to fight their way past a baseball April that had them apologizing all over the place.

Chavis hit two more home runs on Saturday night on the South Side of Chicago, as Boston roughed up the White Sox for 15 runs. That gave Chavis six home runs in his first 14 games, as he became the second Red Sox player -- Sam Horn was the first in 1987 -- to do that in 100 years.

A lot of other good things have been happening for the Red Sox lately. Over the last 21 games, their starting rotation -- even after Nathan Eovaldi was lost for now because of surgery to clean out his pitching elbow -- posted a 3.09 ERA. Betts has started to hit like the MVP of the American League again, after deeming his own slow start “unacceptable.” Martinez continues to look like as important a hitter as there is in the sport.

But, at a time when the Red Sox needed some life in their batting order and some excitement -- and at a time when they seemed to be losing one of their second basemen every other day -- Chavis hasn’t just given them life, he has given them power. Eduardo Nunez, one of the injured second basemen, returned on Saturday night, and came back swinging (he hit a home run of his own). But it is Chavis who is the offensive star of the Red Sox right now -- with those six homers, an OPS of 1.236 and a batting average of .354. He has been the player they hoped he would be, the player he thought he should be. Chavis has gotten up after knocking himself down year ago, when he could have knocked himself out.

This is what Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said about Chavis on Sunday morning:

“He has been a big plus for our offense, [and] has stepped right into the lineup like he belongs. We felt he would help us sometime this season breaking Spring Training. He had a good offensive camp before being sent out. We thought he would need some additional time at second base. However, due to some injuries, he had an early opportunity -- and, so far, [he] has taken advantage of it.”

Chavis hit four home runs for the Sox in his first 52 plate appearances and 42 official at-bats. He has not just hit the ball hard, he has hit the ball HARD. This is what Chad Finn wrote in Sunday’s Boston Globe:

"There hasn’t been a cheapie in the bunch. Those four home runs traveled a total of 1,715 feet, an average of 428.75. His shortest home run covered 374 feet. His two-run home run in the sixth inning Friday night against White Sox starter Reynaldo Lopez traveled 459 feet, the longest by a Red Sox batter this season."

No one knows what kind of second baseman Chavis can be over the long haul. No one even knows if he’s going to be the Red Sox's second baseman for the long haul. He is going to see time at first base and, who knows, if Rafael Devers keeps making errors at third base, Chavis might find his way to third. But he is going to be in Alex Cora’s batting order somewhere, simply because he can’t not be in Cora’s batting order somewhere.

The Red Sox have rebounded from a bad start. Chavis is still trying to come back from the way he really introduced himself to Red Sox Nation in the baseball spring before this one, before his big league career even began. He was one kind of story in April 2018, but he is another kind now in May 2019. The Red Sox are starting to make some noise, and no one is making more right now than Chavis. There have been plenty of surprises for the 2019 edition of the Boston Red Sox, with more bad ones than good ones so far. They weren’t supposed to start the season like this. In all ways, though, neither was Chavis.