One shouldn’t pay too much attention to social media in any aspect of life, but Red Sox fans on the X app over the last week might have stumbled across an opinion that is gaining a little bit of steam: Boston should consider sending down Kristian Campbell.
After a tremendous start to his first season in the major leagues, Campbell has predictably hit a wall. Very few players of his age and experience avoid this valley. Eventually, there’s a book on the player, and the league adjusts. Baseball is a game of adjustments, and thus, the player must make his adjustments.
Campbell is fighting through that process right now. He was an American League Rookie of the Year front-runner through the first month of the season. The 22-year-old went 2-for-4 with his fourth home run of the season April 29, raising his batting average to .313 through his first 28 games.
Since then, Campbell is mired in a .107 (8-for-75) slump with 23 strikeouts in 19 games. He has just one extra-base hit in that span. His slump has come at an inopportune time; the Red Sox went 7-12 in those 19 contests.
Not good.
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This is not unique to Campbell, though. For proof of that, the Red Sox just need to look across the field right now in their interleague series with the Brewers. In Monday’s series opener, Milwaukee center fielder Jackson Chourio jumped all over a 96 mph fastball from Garrett Crochet, his first offering of the afternoon, and walloped it for a 413-foot leadoff home run.
It was Chourio’s eighth dinger of the season. He’s hitting .246 on the year, has scored 30 runs and driven in 28 more from the leadoff spot. It’s a decent sophomore season for the 21-year-old.
Chourio had a sensational rookie year with the Brew Crew. He hit .275 with 21 home runs and 79 RBIs, posting a 119 OPS+ in the process. He finished the season third in National League Rookie of the Year voting behind Paul Skenes and Jackson Merrill. He was nearly a four-win player, based on Baseball Reference’s wins above replacement.
His rookie season wasn’t without its own speed bumps, though. Chourio, like Campbell, came out of the gates hot, although not even to the extent of Campbell’s production. Even still, the .282 batting average through 10 games with a pair of home runs was a tantalizing look at what could be on the way for the franchise cornerstone.
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Then, the slump. Over his next 44 games, Chourio hit .188 with four home runs and struck out 37 times in 141 plate appearances. He hit a low-water OPS mark (.576) on June 1 to go along with a .207 batting average. That’s when the turnaround began. Chourio collected two hits June 2 and never looked back. He hit .305 with 16 home runs and 63 RBIs over the next 97 games. Milwaukee went 56-41 over that stretch and made the playoffs.
The Brewers’ confidence in the youngster never publicly wavered. They let him play through the slump and trusted him to come out the other side. There’s plenty of similarity between the two players, too. While Chourio’s 272 minor league games are basically a season’s worth more than Campbell’s (137), the latter at least played a season’s worth of college ball at Georgia Tech. He’s also much older (23), relatively speaking, than Chourio, who just turned 21 in March. Chourio’s contract extension, one he signed before even seeing a big league pitch, was seen as a comp for a potential Campbell deal, an agreement that was struck less than a year into his major league career.
The Red Sox clearly believe in Campbell. They wouldn’t have paid him if they hadn’t. But patience is paramount for a young player’s development, especially if that player is also learning a new position in the process.
But if Chourio is any indication, things will get better — and perhaps soon.
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