After Signing Him To An Eight-Year Contract Extension Worth $60 Million In April, The Red Sox Are Sending Kristian Campbell Down To Triple A

Elsa. Getty Images.

What a rollercoaster of a season it's been so far for Kristian Campbell of the Boston Red Sox. Gets put on the Opening Day roster, gets rewarded almost immediately with an eight-year, $60 million contract extension and hit the ground running by raking opposing pitching. During that first month he slashed .301/.407/.495 with a .902 OPS. He was named the AL Rookie of the Month for April and looked to be on his way for some big things this season, he couldn't have had a hotter start to his big league career. And then pitchers figured him out and the struggles started. He hit .134 in 22 games during May and .205 in 16 games during June before the Red Sox made the decision to send Campbell down to Triple A to get a badly needed reset. 

To start off, good for him for getting his money. Hard to say no to $60 million after you played like 15 seconds in the bigs, so he's covered there. But it's no secret he's been AWFUL since the end of April. Moving him all around the field surely didn't help him with his struggles at the plate but the Red Sox still did it. He got wrapped up in the Raffy Devers story with the rumors of him asking to play first and what not, it was a lot for Campbell it seems. Maybe he was just getting unlucky? Nope, not according to Baseball Savant, he was just flat out bad. 

Nothing great at all, walks a lot which is good but nothing else is great. If you aren't familiar with Baseball Savant, blue = bad, red = good. So as you can see there isn't a lot of good going for Campbell right now. This is what we see with young guys, it happened to Clayton Kershaw, it happened to Mike Trout, it happened to Jackson Holliday, it happened to Colton Cowser. You find some early success, get figured out and go down a level to find it again. Sometimes a reset is needed for the longterm success of the player and the team, that's what the Sox are banking on here. Sox knew they had to do something, you can't keep throwing a struggling rookie out there to drown. 

He'll be back up this summer sometime but the .159/.243/.465 slash line with 2 HR and 2 doubles in May and June combined isn't cutting it. Get fixed, make some adjustments and Boston fans will see ya in a little. Until then, keep counting that money my man. I think sending these guys down to get work is the right move, them sitting on the bench or getting embarrassed over and over at the plate in the bigs isn't the way to go about it, this is a solid move for him moving forward. But a reminder, this is why you take the money too.