Yesterday, manager Alex Cora announced that Marcelo Mayer would be the starting second baseman for the 2026 Red Sox. Thus concludes one of the sillier spring training storylines we’ve seen in a long time. There was never really any baseball reason to suggest that either Isiah Kiner-Falefa or Andruw Monasterio would make more sense for the big league team than Mayer, even considering Mayer’s struggles at the plate in his first taste of the majors last year. But Cora says he “wanted to push him.” (Alex Speier, Boston Globe)
As a domino move that corresponded with Mayer making the big league team, Krisitian Campbell was officially sent down to AAA. This isn’t surprising, though Cora did sound surprised by some of the things he saw from Campbell in Fort Myers. “The strikeouts were going up and the walks going down, and that’s not him. He’s a guy who controls the strike zone and doesn’t swing and miss. That didn’t happen during camp.” (Chris Cotillo, MassLive)
I’m all for making Marcelo earn his spot in theory. But the problem with putting that theory into practice is that no serious and intelligent front office would ever base any meaningful decisions on spring training performances, marked as they are by small sample sizes and variable competition. Case in point: Garrett Crochet had another rough start yesterday to close out a pretty rough spring overall. But no one seems concerned, nor should they. To quote Crochet: “Whatever.” (Peter Abraham, Boston Globe)
Willson Contreras’s spring didn’t go exactly to plan either, as he ended up on the bench for Venezuela’s run to the World Baseball Classic championship. But it doesn’t sound like he minds one bit: “I think it’s the best experience of my life. I played in the World Series in ‘16, and it was big, but playing in the WBC for your country, for 37 million people, means a lot more to me. And I enjoyed every single second, every single part of it. I soaked that in, and it was the best.” (Hayden Bird, Boston.com)
Someone who did have a good spring, even if it won’t result in making a big league team, is D’Angelo Ortiz. Little Papi got his first spring hit. “Hopefully he was watching,” he said of his legendary father. “If he wasn’t watching, we’ve got a problem.” (Ian Browne, MLB.com)
