Kristian Campbell had a storied season with the Red Sox this season. He made the Opening Day roster and made an immediate impact in April. He hit .301 with 4 HRs and 8 doubles, all with an OPS of .902. This earned him an extension with the club, signing an eight-year deal worth $60 million.
Since then, he struggled and fell off hard, batting .159, striking out 40 times, and an OPS of .465. Unfortunately for him, this was enough for the Red Sox to send him back down. Now the question is, was he rushed?
He won Minor League Player of the Year last year, had the fastest development of any player in the minors, and gave fans a flashback to the days of (should've been future Hall of Famer) Dustin Pedroia. His potential is just that.
But what went wrong with the young second baseman?
His plate approach and his defense were the key problems to his demotion. The scouts emphasized hard on the problems of his swing mechanics, despite his elite bat speed (at the 86th percentile) and a compact swing. His early-season approach hadn't translated consistently.
Pitchers were targeting his weaknesses. He took many pitches down and away, and he also swung freely at pitches inside (and missing them badly). Challenging those weaknesses is how pitchers succeed in the MLB, so there's no shame as to why Campbell's approach got exposed this quickly.
However, it doesn't make his development any better. It's a bit harder for him now. Looking at Campbell and how he approaches, it was fun to look at what was wrong with his stance and his swing.
Breaking it down, Campbell has two different swings. When he's ahead in the count or just early in at-bats, he keeps a calm and compact direct path to the baseball. When behind in the count, or when pitchers attack either low and away or inside, his barrel drifts below the plane.
The latter swing creates a longer swing arc, causing more weak contact, and a big increase in whiffs on anything with vertical movement. Ironically, he's very disciplined at the plate with his chase rate at just 23% (average is 30%), and that's impressive for a 22-year-old player. However, his behind-the-count contact is around 62%, which is significantly lower than his zone contact (80%).
Early in the season, he showed excellent rhythm loading his hands and transferring his weight in his swing. As the pitchers adjusted their approach to him, he's now late, especially on those inside fastballs, but also mid-zone breaking balls. The lateness forces him to hook his swing across the zone, which gets rid of the power and creates more groundball situations to his pull side (heavy emphasis on the groundballs, with the rate at 55% in May-June).
Video footages show that he opens early with his front hip, like a twitch-like maneuver. He's not using his back hip in his swing, causing it to reduce the rotational force on his swing path. He also relies too much on his hands, much like little leaguers when they just want to throw the bat at the ball without any plan or approach at the plate.
As for those pitches down and away, he's either reaching out and tapping the grounders toward the middle or the right side of the infield, or is swinging over the pitch entirely. This makes it easier for pitchers to throw changeups outside the zone to finish him off with a strikeout. This has become his biggest weakness.
As for his defense, it's passable, at best. His fielding run value sits at -7, placing him WELL below average. His Outs Above Average rank is in the 1st percentile with 7 errors and just a .968 fielding percentage at second base (well below the average of .980).
He was projected as an athletic and all-around player, but his speed has translated into limited baserunning value (only +1), and defensive metrics suggest that he's overmatched on ROUTINE plays.
How Campbell Can Fix These Issues
First, let's get this out of the way: Campbell is 22. He's a young and very confident player. He's passionate about the game and cares about how he is. He has a calm attitude and is very coachable, as the results have shown.
He needs to fix the two-strike approach. He needs to quiet his hands and think oppo. As everyone has seen with Campbell, he moves his hands rapidly before the pitches come. Batters sometimes do this to make the bat lighter or to time pitches. Reducing his pre-swing hand movement so the bat stays in the hitting zone longer will only help matters.
He'll need to think more of being a push hitter for now, given that his contact toward the outside part of the plate isn't the best. This is more of a mental cue to stay shorter and avoid hooking groundballs. A good drill for that would be short-bat drills to reinforce a tighter path to his swing. But this will have to be at a high-velocity rate, so he can force quicker decision-making and remove that extra swing length.
His weight transfer is delayed as well, with him often catching the ball in defense instead of being on offense and attacking the ball. Campbell needs to simplify his load, with less exaggeration towards his leg tick, to keep timing repeatable. Step-back drills would help mightily with this adjustment.
Campbell's weight transfer is specifically delayed due to the hip movement, as mentioned earlier. He needs to stay closed and private with his swing. Med balls always do the trick with this, along with slow-motion reps for his swing.
Now, for his approach as a whole, he just needs to set up a machine low and away so he can work on seeing those pitches out of the hand and letting them go or adjusting to them. A very underrated movie called "Pitcher & the Pinup" taught me this very line: "See the ball before you stride, let it go if it's outside."
Where his fielding is concerned, he just needs to be more athletic. Everyone knows he is, so he just needs to act like it more. The fundamentals are the problem. He needs to get lower within his stance with a shorter and wider base for a quicker push towards the ball.
He also fields off-balanced, which mostly leads to rushed and poor throws. Campbell needs some rhythm in his step. For fielding, it's a lot like dancing (also hitting a little, too). Those rushed mechanics give him an inconsistent release, and he just needs to set his feet and throw. Short-arm drills, one-knee throws, and footwork ladders are the name of the game here. These will help him drastically improve, and in a short amount of time, too.
But a big problem, too, is that he struggles to maintain balance and strength to complete his throws when a ball is hit up the middle. He'll need to practice that pivot foot so he can transition quicker, and not just on those but on double plays as well. Backhand reps can help with that, along with some conditioning.
Kristian Campbell is going to be great; he just needs those few tweaks. This happens with many young players. Xander Bogaerts changed his plate approach many times in his young career, and so did Pedroia. It may not happen right now, but give another offseason to work on his craft, and surely enough, he'll be right back up and starting for the Red Sox.