TORONTO — In his four-plus years in the majors, Xander Bogaerts has become well-acquainted with adversity. But nothing has prepared him for the challenge of playing through the second half of this season with an injured right hand.

Bogaerts injured his right hand when he was hit by a Jacob Faria pitch on July 6 at Tampa Bay. After missing only one game, he returned for the last two contests before the All-Star break.

That July 6 date has become the fulcrum of Bogaerts' season. He was hitting .308 with an .818 OPS before the hit by pitch, with a legitimate case to be an All-Star. He's batted just .205 since with a .580 OPS.

"This is the first time I've ever dealt with pain like that," Bogaerts said Wednesday at Rogers Centre. "Lower half wouldn't be an issue. But something with your hands wouldn't be a small thing. That affects a lot of stuff.

"We're in first place. You want to play, you want to help the team out. Sometimes you feel like you don't do it. You're fighting, you're grinding."

Bogaerts is still fighting through pain in that hand, which has been exacerbated by soreness in his right wrist over the last two weeks. He's unsure of why that started — whether there was some impact that caused it or whether changes to his swing led to soreness elsewhere.

The shortstop said it was frustrating to deal with another injury just as he seemed to be overcoming the initial one.

Indeed, he's made strides at various times this month, including an 11-game stretch through last week in which he went 13-for-39 with six extra-base hits — almost all of them encouragingly to left field.

But Bogaerts has one hit in his last 15 at-bats entering Wednesday's finale in Toronto.

"Pulling the ball is always a good sign. Now again, it's a bit tougher to do," he said, playing with the wrap on his wrist pregame. "It's not easy when you're feeling a lot of stuff going on and you're playing through some stuff, especially when it's something that has to do with your hands.

"I'm a very handsy guy. I'm not a guy who uses my lower half a lot in my swing. It's been tough."

"For him, he uses his hands to do everything in this game," said hitting coach Chili Davis. "When it's any hand that bothers a hitter, it's going to affect something. It's one of those things where you get in the batter's box, you know the injury's there. Pitch by pitch, you’ve got to step out and say, 'Suck it up. You’ve got to go after this. It's probably going to sting a little bit.'"

The issue isn't just the pain Bogaerts is dealing with; the issue is how the pain has altered his mechanics.

"I started creating a lot of bad habits, and some of them have stuck still with me," Bogaerts said. "I changed [my swing], and I can't find it back. That’s the trouble swinging the way I used to swing: it would hurt a lot. So I started creating bad habits, and that’s where I am right now — bad."

While Davis acknowledged Bogaerts is likely to be dealing with soreness in that hand the rest of this season, there are minor adjustments the team is trying to make for the shortstop. On Wednesday, for instance, the Sox noticed Bogaerts has shifted his position in the batter's box farther back than in years past. So they worked with him on moving back up in the box, where he can make contact with breaking balls before they start moving away from him as much.

"The way he swings is the way he swings. But if you move around in different areas in the batter's box, it's going to change your contact point," Davis said. "Each day we try to find little things — nothing that’s mechanical that’s going to confuse him, but little things to keep him on the ball."

In one sense, that Bogaerts' second-half slump is so explicable — again, it dates almost precisely to the hand injury — is encouraging for future years. When healthy, he and the Sox know what he's capable of.

But for the 2017 Red Sox, it's worrisome that the pain persists for Bogaerts, and that he's struggled so much to play through it.

"I know when I'm 100 percent, I know what I can do. I've done it before. I'm not worried with that," Bogaerts said. "I continue to work and continue to work. One day you feel good and the next day you feel back to where you're terrible again.

"We've got one more month left. What you can do is control your work ethic and keep your confidence high and just trust in your abilities to help the team."