The 2024 Minor League Player of the Year made his Major League debut yesterday, and for good reason.
I wrote on March 1st that Alex Bregman was going to be the Opening Day second baseman unless Kristian Campbell earned his way onto the big club and forced them to reshuffle. And well, the caveat hanging above everyone’s heads at the time was that Rafael Devers wasn’t going to move off of third base. Come Opening Day, I’m so glad all the dominos fell into place for Campbell to be penciled in the right side of the infield.
It’s not that we were wrong to think that second base would be both a question mark and a dog fight at the beginning of the Spring. It was all a matter of how things were going to play out. Vaughn Grissom—who, I said, could earn the spot if he played well enough in Spring Training—well, didn’t play well enough. He was optioned to Minor League camp on March 19th. That left a battle between David Hamilton and Campbell. Hamilton’s Spring Training —a .263 batting average, a dinger and 5 RBIs — was great for the super utility infielder. Looking at his actual fielding deployment over March really told the story. He spent his first 12 Spring Training outings split right down the middle at usage, 6 games at short, 6 games at second. By the end of March, he’d spent over half of his games in general at short and was coming off the bench more and more.
Aside from one random start in left field in Mexico, Campbell was the starting second baseman down the home stretch. He might not have earned it with his bat with a .167 average and a .576 OPS in 20 games (though the three dingers were easy on the eyes, albeit one was in a prospects game and another was in an exhibition in Mexico)—but with his glove he swooped in to steal the no. 4 spot on the fielding card.
Campbell looked like a bona fide pro in the infield — diving catches, spinning throws, even plays in the outfield that called to attention, he was flashy as can be. And, perhaps most importantly, he had only one error. And that came as a left fielder. Defensive reliability is going to be so important for the Red Sox success this season, and Campbell showed that off in spades over 20 Spring Training/exhibition outings.
Let me give the tl;dr end of Spring Training recap. For the last week or so of spring training, Alex Cora made it known Raffy wasn’t going to be starting at third base. Consider my eyebrows raised. Finally on the 26th, Cora announced Devers would officially be a full-time DH for the 2025 season. The position was freely open, as that has to shift Bregman to third base. Campbell was going to be the starting second baseman.
