Monday Morning Brushback: So This Is The New Year

The Red Sox week in review dives into Rafael Devers’ slow start, Garrett Crochet’s Red Sox debut, and Kristian Campbell’s first days in the bigs.

It’s hard for me to believe, but 2025 marks the third year of the Monday Morning Brushback here on OTM. Our fearless leader Dan Secatore took a chance on yours truly prior to the start of the 2023 season. Since then, I’ve been all the more happier because I’m able to write stuff like this on a notable platform.

You on the other hand, dear reader…well, your mileage may vary, but welcome back to the Red Sox week in review. For the uninitiated: the MMBB dives into three topics that caught my eye during the past few days—it could be one player’s performance, it could be an ongoing trend within the team as a whole, it could be the pattern of fans drinking beer out of shoes in the Fenway bleachers; anything goes in the Brushback. We’ll try to get a better understanding of our favorite team while hopefully sharing a few laughs along the way; again, YMMV on the latter point.

Speaking of mileage: the Red Sox opened the 2025 campaign against the Texas Rangers miles away from Boston. The club was only able to come out with one win in the prairies of the Lone Star State (I just assume Texas is full of prairies, someone who can confirm or deny if Arlington is near some prairies is more than welcome to do so in the comments below).

While that outcome comes as a bit of a disappointment considering the (rightfully) high expectations placed on the club this year, it’s important to keep in mind that the Rangers are no slouches in spite of their lackluster output last year on the heels of their 2023 title. If we’re keeping it a buck, I think Tetas Texas is gonna win the AL pennant again this year. It was an early test for the Sox to begin the long road to October; the results were mixed, as we’ll get into below.

For the first time in 2025: it’s Monday Morning Brushback time, y’all.

A Start to Forget

Photo by Maddie Malhotra/Boston Red Sox/Getty Images

Let’s just address the elephant in the room right away: Rafael Devers has been capital-B Bad to begin the new season.

Following a spring where he was the subject of limited playing time and seemingly unlimited headlines regarding if he’d be playing in the field, manager Alex Cora has moved the franchise player from third base to the designated hitter role. It was a decision that I believe we all saw coming at some point in the future considering his defensive limitations at the hot corner, but perhaps not one that we expected to come so soon on a full-time basis when the offseason began, and so early into the 11-year contract extension that he signed in January of 2023.

So far, not so good for number 11: Devers became the first player in MLB history to strikeout 10 times in his first three games of the season en route to an 0-for-16 start at the plate. Things didn’t get much better on Sunday, as he went 0-for-4 with another pair of punch-outs.

That walk Saturday night to drive in his first run of the year was cool, though.

So what gives here? Devers was handed that lucrative extension to hit, and he ain’t doing it when that’s literally his only responsibility on the field at this moment.

I’m not sure how much stock to put into the fact that Devers’ game time down in the Grapefruit League this spring was limited due to his ongoing shoulder annoyances—the same trouble that put him on the shelf to finish last season—but I feel like it’s absolutely worth mentioning. Seeing live pitching, even in a spring training context, has to count for something before the games actually count; it was an unusual ramp-up period for Devers, one that he might simply still be in.

The mental aspect of moving off of third and becoming the DH can’t be overlooked either. Some prominent voices surrounding the team (including Lou Merloni on Pod On Lansdowne, I’ll have you know!!) have noted that being a DH isn’t as easy as “see ball, hit ball.” Designated hitters, they’ve said, are susceptible to sitting and thinking about any mistake or missed opportunity until their next turn at the bad, as opposed to a position player who can move on to the next situation on the other side of the inning.

Of course, you could very easily point out (just as I did however-many words ago) that the value he provides to the team has always been through his bat, and that the shift to DH shouldn’t be earth shattering. That’s probably fair, but I also think it’s fair to allow a wee bit of grace for someone who’s just now moving off of the only position he’s ever played—how much grace should be granted, considering how much Devers is being paid to hit in the heart of the order, that’s for you to decide.

Or maybe this is just a plain ol’ instance of a slump that just so happens to be right at the start of the season.

Would we be getting a bit frustrated if Devers went oh-fer with 10 K’s during a four game stretch in the middle of June? Sure, of course. Would we be making this much of a deal about it if it were happening at that point as opposed to the very first series of the year? I’d venture to guess that we wouldn’t. This isn’t to say that valid criticism of Devers’ offensive production isn’t warranted right now (because it is), but bad stretches have happened to the best players throughout the course of baseball’s history.

At the end of the day, I’m not overly worried about Devers. These shoulder problems of his aren’t new, and he’s still produced at a high level over the course of his career. He’s a professional hitter who has the bandwidth to make whatever tweaks are necessary to succeed. He’s also in a good enough of a lineup (in spite of early returns in Texas; hey, Raf isn’t the only hitter off to a slow start!) to have guys get on ahead of him and to have guys protect him in the order—better protection, better pitches to see, better pitches to clobber.

The man himself didn’t sound too worried the other night, either.

One thing I will point out, though: there were a few times where Devers looked overpowered by, frankly, mediocre gas. Tyler Mahle got him chasing at 93 MPH, Chris Martin forced a whiff with 92 MPH, and Hoby Milner’s 89 MPH heater was enough to get Raf to swing and miss. All three pitches were delivered with two strikes in the count, all three pitches were up in the zone, and all three pitches were enough to beat Devers. Easy enough for me to sit here and critique that when I’m just writing a blog—I’m also not paid to catch up to that velo, though.

As Alex Cora pointed out back in September—before Devers was put on the IL with the shoulder trouble—opposing teams were abusing the use of fastballs against him, while he simply didn’t have the bat speed to counter them.

Through the first three games of 2025, Devers’ average bat speed was at a not-so-nice 69 MPH, according to Baseball Savant. For reference, the league average is 71.5 MPH, a mark he’s eclipsed in both 2023 and 2024, which is as much data as the site provides. I think it’s a bit of a bad process to correlate Raf’s slow start in 2025 with his tough ending to 2024 considering that we’re several months removed from September (hey, I didn’t have a dog at that point, and now our sweet bundle of joy runs amok!) and considering, again, that he might be shaking off some of the cobwebs since he didn’t see a full slate of work in the spring. However, that bad speed is going to be something at least worth monitoring going forward, especially if opposing pitchers continue to challenge the newly minted DH with cheese.

Red Sox Stats suggested that the swing speed average is probably weighed down a bit by some tweener cuts, so take that for what it’s worth.

All of that is to say that I’m still not overly concerned. The calendar hasn’t even turned to April; the sample size we’re talking about here is minuscule; it’s tough to learn much of anything that’s indicative or prescriptive of what’s to come after just one series.

Living Piggy Lives

Photo by Richard Rodriguez/Getty Images

Lefty Garrett Crochet made his Red Sox debut on Opening Day. That was fun! While the end results weren’t perfect, I think we got some glimpses into the exciting arsenal that he provides.

The final line itself this past Thursday wasn’t too extravagant: Crochet gave up five hits and two earned runs, while striking out four and walking two over the course of 88 pitches. That pitch count got to damn near 50 after only a pair of innings; that lack of efficiency did give me pause, but there were still enough positive takeaways from the day.

Stuff+, per FanGraphs, analyzes a pitcher’s release point, spin rate, velocity, and numerous other metrics on his offerings to determine how effective his pitches act. 100 is always the league average, similar to other plus-based metrics such as OPS+ and ERA+. Crochet’s Stuff+ in his Red Sox debut was 113, which was the exact same number he posted during his breakout 2024 run. The southpaw’s Location+ (which is used to determine if a pitch is landing in an ideal spot given the count) from Opening Day was a below-average 97, but that’s not too far off of the 103 Location+ mark he put in last season with the Pale Hose.

So the stuff Crochet offers can still make you salivate and opens the doors for eye-popping strikeout numbers (we’re talking about a guy who had an absurd 35.1% strikeout rate with Chicago last season), while there are reasons to believe that the inefficient pitch count due to extended ABs early on isn’t going to become a concerning trend; he only walked guys at a 5.5% clip in 2024, so if his command in 2025 is generally in the same range as it was in 2024, then we’re really cooking with gas here.

One thing I’m curious about potentially becoming a theme: Crochet throwing more cutters. Of course this is just one start we’re talking about here, but Crochet threw the cutter at a 48.9% rate on Thursday; in contrast, he threw it 28.5% of the time last year. Andrew Bailey’s campaign against four seamers continues!

The Boston brain trust obviously sees something that they like about Garret’s cutter, as it was the pitch he threw nearly half of the time in his first Red Sox appearance. I’m interested in seeing how it’s deployed going forward.

All in all, it was a fairly encouraging start for the first ace—but the best is yet to come.

KC Joins The Band

Photo by Richard Rodriguez/Getty Images

Welcome to the majors, Kristian Campbell!

One of the top prospects in all of baseball—and one of the big three younglings in Boston’s system—broke camp with the big club and made his debut as the starting second baseman on Opening Day. Since then, he’s produced pretty well for a guy just starting out on his MLB journey: he looks steady enough turning double plays, he almost made a phenomenal catch in left field Saturday night (“almost” only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, I know), and he knocked the first of what should be many homers—causing the MLB social team to send a not-so-subtle shot at a certain Boston sports radio host.

At least the news that the club and Campbell were close on an extension was able to ease the brunt of a tough loss Saturday night.

An extension to Campbell would make me giddy. The kid clearly has some top talent, and the club seems to recognize who they have on their hands here. Smart organizations get deals like this done sooner rather than later; I’m happy to hear that the Sox seem committed to making Campbell a massive part of the next however-many years. Whether or not they’re able to do the same with guys like Roman Anthony and Marcelo Mayer remains to be seen, but that’s a different story for a different day.

Now how much that extension will cost? No fuckin’ clue, man. Mike Axisa of CBS pointed out that the deal that Arizona gave to then-22-year-old outfielder Corbin Carroll in March of 2023 (eight years at $111 million and a club option for 2031) could be a suitable comparison. That tracks in my opinion, since:

A. Carroll only had a month of experience under his belt by the time he put pen to paper,

2. Carroll, like Campbell, had massive prospect pedigree, and

D. Campbell is currently the same age that Carroll was when he was locked up by the Sneks.

However, contracts only ever seem to expand and there’s a looming labor situation following the conclusion of the 2026 season. I have no idea what players or clubs are considering with those factors in mind.

All I know is that I hope I get to enjoy Kristian Campbell for a long, long time.

Song of the Week: “The Boys Are Back In Town” by Thin Lizzy

Because our boys are, indeed, back in town on Friday.

Same time and same place next week, friends! Go Sox.