Decision time is just weeks away.
As much as Rafael Devers wants to keep the Boston Red Sox’s third base position, that decision won’t come down to his performance.
The Red Sox know what Devers is as a defender at this point, for better or worse. He’s put in work through the years to keep from being moved off the position a lot sooner, and he made fewer errors in 2024, but he’ll never be a plus defender in the way new acquisition Alex Bregman reliably is.
Whether Devers keeps the third base role, however, comes down to whether one of the young players in camp–namely Vaughn Grissom or Kristian Campbell, wins the second base job. If not, Boston will shift Bregman to second until one of those two proves beyond doubt that they’re ready.
As the games play out over the next few weeks, manager Alex Cora and Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow will have a tough call to make. But one insider has an early conjecture as to which way they’re leaning.
On Friday, MassLive’s Chris Cotillo predicted that the 22-year-old Campbell would crack the Opening Day roster as the starting second baseman, shifting Bregman to third and Devers to designated hitter for the foreseeable future.
“When people like Breslow and Cora diplomatically note that ‘these things tend to work themselves out,’ they’re basically saying that Devers will eventually play where they want him to play. If Campbell shows out and claims second base, that spot will be designated hitter.”
Campbell’s meteoric rise through the Red Sox’s farm system last season has been well-documented. While he wasn’t on most top prospect radars to begin the season, he wound up hitting .330 with a .997 OPS across three levels of competition, ending the year on a hot streak in Triple-A.
Now a consensus top-10 prospect in the game, Campbell is currently getting his chance to win a job, and Grissom shouldn’t be taken lightly as competition. The 24-year-old is a former top prospect himself, though he struggled mightily in 2024 after arriving in the Chris Sale trade.
By Mar. 27, when the Red Sox open their season in Arlington, Tex., we’ll see if Campbell did enough to separate himself as a difference-maker.
