Some top prospects are drafted. Others are made. This is a story about the latter, and about what you really can learn from the first few days of a long Major League season.
Welcome to the path of Boston's Kristian Campbell. In his first weekend in the Majors, the 22-year-old swung the bat in such a way that it immediately validated everything we¡¯d learned about him as a prospect. It also provided more than a little confidence that big things are ahead.
Two years ago, Campbell wasn¡¯t a big-name prospect, but that was true four years ago, too. After going undrafted out of high school in 2021, he was asked to redshirt as a freshman at Georgia Tech. While he performed well there in 2023 (1.033 OPS), he also hit only four homers in 45 games before the Red Sox drafted him in the fourth round that year. He then hit just one homer in 22 Minor League games in his pro debut, before appearing on zero Top 100 Prospects lists entering 2024. He was an afterthought in our own review of the 2023 Red Sox Draft class, to be honest, mostly notable for being selected with the pick the Sox gained for the departure of Xander Bogaerts as a free agent to San Diego.
But Campbell did have outstanding plate discipline and swing decisions, with 29 walks against only 17 strikeouts in his lone year at Georgia Tech. And so his path to being a consensus top prospect entering 2025 -- No. 7 on MLB Pipeline¡¯s list, and in the top five most other places -- can be wildly oversimplified to one thing: The Red Sox wanted him to increase his bat speed, and they taught him how to do it. The process of how he and they made that happen has been reported at length, and we won¡¯t repeat it all here, other than to say: It had a lot to do with overloaded and underloaded bats and improving the swing path to get the ball in the air.
That led to a breakout 2024 -- being named MLB Pipeline's Hitting Prospect of the Year and MiLB Breakout Player of the Year, among other accolades -- and being the only one of Boston¡¯s ¡°Big Three¡± prospects to make the Opening Day roster, though Marcelo Mayer and Roman Anthony are certain to join him soon.
Since we don¡¯t have public bat speed metrics from the Minor Leagues, that made Campbell's big league debut in Texas over the weekend all the more anticipated. While six hits (three for extra bases) in four games is impressive enough, what¡¯s really important here is how he did it -- how he swung, and how hard he hit it.
Here¡¯s what we learned after just a few games.
- Campbell's home run off the Rangers' Jacob Webb on Saturday was hit at 112.2 mph, which is a top 3% exit velocity so far this season, and one of the 20 hardest-hit balls we¡¯ve seen across the sport yet. How rare is this one? In 2024, less than one-half of one percent of batted balls got to 112 mph. Campbell did it on his third day in the Majors.
- Campbell¡¯s bat speed of 74.6 mph is in the 86th percentile in the Majors -- he swings faster than nearly 90% of batters, in other words -- and three times he topped 80 mph. A ¡°fast swing,¡± for context, is merely 75 mph.
It¡¯s not, of course, that you get extra credit for a home run that¡¯s hit harder than anyone else¡¯s; Aaron Judge¡¯s home runs don¡¯t count for more than Cody Bellinger¡¯s just because they¡¯re hit harder. It¡¯s that these metrics, particularly for a young player, can tell you a lot about what kind of hitter they might be.
Put it this way, as far as the exit velocity goes. Last year, 37 players got to 112 mph at least five times, which seems a reasonable enough target given that Campbell has already gotten there once. That group of 37 hit .273/.351/.495, a line 37% above average, and while that¡¯s not the only reason that players like Shohei Ohtani, Juan Soto, Judge and Yordan Alvarez are great, it¡¯s clearly a group you want to join. (Only one of the 37, Jo Adell, wasn¡¯t within 5% of average.)
The reason why this all matters right now is that unlike batting average (Luis Arraez, of all people, is still hitting .056) or ERA (where Walker Buehler probably won¡¯t hold an 8.31 mark for long), anything about speed becomes meaningful extremely quickly. You don¡¯t need but a fastball or two to know how fast a pitcher throws; you can feel confident that you know a hitter¡¯s bat speed after only about six or seven swings. (That¡¯s easy enough to see even in the early 2025 season leaderboard, where already, two of the three slowest swings belong to Arraez and Steven Kwan -- just like they were in 2024.)
¡°He probably hits the ball harder than anyone in Minor League Baseball,¡± Red Sox director of player development Brian Abraham said last June, before Campbell¡¯s promotion to Triple-A Worcester, ¡°and hits the ball harder than a lot of our big leaguers.¡±
It is, so far, true. He has the hardest-hit ball of any Boston hitter this year, and the three fastest swings, too. (And four of the top six, and seven of the top 11.) He also has the most closed stance in the game, which isn¡¯t so much "good" or "bad" as much as it is notable.
So, what can you learn about baseball in the first few days of the season? It depends on what you¡¯re looking at. What you can focus on early are the things that mean something fast -- for example, one of the brightest rookies in the game posting elite bat speed and exit velocity in his first weekend in the Majors.
Also interesting are the potential implications for hitting if in fact the Red Sox are on to something here with the way they helped Campbell increase his bat speed.
A decade ago, after all, teams stopped the traditional approach of trying to teach hard throwers to throw strikes, once they realized they could teach strike-throwers to throw hard. What if batting is about to undergo the same transformation? What if, instead of trying to teach elite swingers to make more contact, which players like Adell have proven is difficult, you can teach those with excellent plate discipline and contact skills to swing harder? For all the talk about funny-looking bats, this might be the real hitting revolution to watch.