Since Triston Casas went down with a season-ending knee injury the Red Sox have looked all over their roster for a potential replacement at first base. The club has used Romy Gonzalez, Abraham Toro and Nick Sogard, none of whom have much experience at the position, and approached Rafael Devers as well.
Now, rookie Kristian Campbell is the latest candidate.
Campbell began taking ground balls at first base on Friday, and Sunday he continued running through drills at the position during pregame warmups. In the meantime, top infield prospect Marcelo Mayer has begun getting more playing time at second base at Triple-A, suggesting a potential scenario where Mayer gets called up and takes over that position while Campbell bumps over to first.
Is that a realistic or imminent possibility? Red Sox manager Alex Cora said they will at least need to see if Campbell can handle playing first, something he said won’t be as easy as people often assume.
“Honestly we’ve been through this dance before in the past,” Cora said, referencing former Red Sox players Kyle Schwarber, Christian Arroyo and Franchy Cordero, all of whom endured rocky transitions and in some cases got hurt trying to play first. “We’re taking a chance here. All this talk of this guy should play first, this and that, I can give you five examples of why it didn’t work the last five years. It’s not just plug a guy over here and see what happens, so we have to see how he moves, obviously decision-making, we won’t know until he actually plays.”
As far as when Campbell could make his in-game debut at first base, Cora suggested they may try to ease him into the role if a low-stakes opportunity presents itself.
“We were actually talking about hopefully we’re up 15 and we can put him at first, or hopefully not, but we’re down 10 and he can go to first and get a few reps,” Cora said. “We’ll get there when we get there. This is not a commitment, this is introducing the position to the kid. We believe that athletic-wise he can do it but there’s more than standing there and catching throws.”
“Whenever we decide he can handle the position we’ll put him there, and if we don’t believe he can handle it we’ll stay the course,” Cora added later.
After earning American League Rookie of the Month honors for his hot start in April, Campbell has cooled down significantly over the past few weeks. The 22-year-old came into Sunday 4 for 47 (.085) over his last 11 games since the start of May and has seen his rate statistics and advanced metrics plummet across the board.
Despite those struggles, Cora said the team remains 100% committed to the rookie and that his recent difficulties aren’t cause for long-term concern.
“It’s just a rookie going through a big league season. Teams are going to make adjustments, the one thing we like is controlling the strike zone,” Cora said. “We’ve just got to be patient, this is the route we went and we understand the player and we know there’s potential there, but we also know how it works over 162. There’s going to be some tough stretches, we have faced some quality, quality, quality pitching.”