Mazz: Red Sox should be ashamed of how they have handled Kristian Campbell

Two months ago, the Red Sox all but paraded Kristian Campbell around as if he were a childhood star, happily taking credit for what he had seemingly become. Now Campbell has been demoted, sent back back to Triple-A, and so it's fair to wonder: are the Red Sox taking any of the blame?

If not, they should be.

In fact, they should be taking all of it.

Before anyone gets silly or downright stupid, nobody is rooting for Campbell to fail. By all accounts, the soon-to-be 23-year-old is a likeable, relatively soft-spoken talent who has a bright future. And he still does. But the rise-and-fall of Campbell this spring has left the Red Sox looking as downright foolish and selfish - and that is saying something - and it's hard to remember an occasion where they have operated with such negligence.

In the end, this was bad parenting at its very worst, alleged grownups more interested in taking credit for their offspring than in doing what was right for him or her.

^{Kristian Campbell}

“Kristian was not drafted in the first round. He wasn’t a top prospect upon entering the organization. What he was was a good player who made himself a great player because of his work ethic and diligence and open mindedness and attitude," Red Sox chief baseball officer said upon the signing of Campbell to an eight-year, $60-million contract slightly more than a week into his major league career. “And so in many ways, he is a prime example of what’s possible when great scouting meets great development around a player who prioritizes maximizing his potential over everything else.

Be sure, read every word slowly in that commentary. Campbell "was a good player who made himself a great player because of his work ethic and diligence and open-mindedness." The kicker? "He is a prime example of what’s possible when great scouting meets great development around a player who prioritizes maximizing his potential over everything else."

Oh, I get it.

Yeah, Campbell was good.

But we made him great.

Now they've made him a "prime example" when organizations (or, more specifically, and the people who run them) are more interested in celebrating their own genius (or smelling their own farts) than they are in actually what's best for their player.

By the time he went back to Triple-A yesterday, Campbell looked like something of a mess. He had batted .154 in his last 39 games (nearly one-quarter of the season) and the worst defensive second baseman in baseball by both tradition (errors) and modern (runs saved) metrics. After an excellent first month, he made a precipitous nosedive and never recovered. He just kept sinking.

And so he has sunk all the way back to the minors.

Campbell wasn't ready, folks. And there's no way of knowing when he will be. But the Red Sox fell so far from 2019 through 2024 that they (and you?) started to look at the talent in their minor-league system as some type of elixir from the gods. Campbell was the golden child, a fourth-round pick who rocketed through the minor leagues with the speed of an interstellar comet.

You know how many games Campbell played in college? Forty-five. (I once played more than that in one summer.) You know how many games he played in his minor-league career - until now? 137. But that's really only part of the story.

^{Kristian Campbell}

Some players, of course, are fast learners who make it to the majors quickly. A select few don't play in the minors at all. Those players are generally looked upon as unicorns, unique talents and prodigies who break the mold. On the one hand, the Red Sox clearly told you that Campbell was not one of those. “Kristian was not drafted in the first round. He wasn’t a top prospect upon entering the organization. What he was was a good player ...." But the Red Sox believed they had turned him into a unicorn and they were all too eager to tell you about it.

So what happened to Campbell now? Hopefully, nothing cataclysmic. Hopefully, Campbell goes back to the minors and gets the repetition he always needed, offensively and, much less surprisingly, defensively. (As a fielder, he has kinda stunk.) Hopefully, he gets delicate and more patient handling that doesn't rush him onto a team that has been neglected in recent years, that then places him in both the middle of the diamond and the middle of the batting, that drops him square into the glow of the spotlight. Hopefully, he gets a team and organization that protects him rather than exposes him, because the latter is exactly what the Red Sox have done to date.

The short story?

The Red Sox did the worst thing you can ever do to a young player or person, at least from the perspective of someone trying to help them develop.

They made it about them.

For an organization that often seem too intent to tell you how smart it is, it was inexcusably short-sighted and downright stupid.