FORT MYERS, Fla. — Kristian Campbell spent much of his offseason standing in the living room of his parents’ house, staring into a mirror.
The reflection showed a big leaguer. But one who needed a little work. After a storybook start to the 2025 season, one that began when he signed an eight-year, $60 million extension, it all came crashing down by mid-June, when the Red Sox shipped him to Triple A. He never returned to the majors.
That mirror showed a resilient kid who was determined to get back to Boston. It also proved to be a tool in showing him how he’d get there.
From video work to visualization, from hitting off a tee to machine work, Campbell slowly peeled back and then rebuilt his swing over the course of the offseason before taking a winter ball assignment in Puerto Rico to test it out. This spring, he’s planning to put all that work on display.
It’s been a tedious, methodical, but altogether necessary process if he wants to get back to the majors.
“I’ve never slowed it down that much in my life, ever,” Campbell said. “And I finally did that. So it’s a step in my career and that’s part of my career. You just have to embrace it.”
The day after the Red Sox’s season ended in a Wild Card Series loss to the New York Yankees, Campbell, who’d been in Florida with a group of players working out if the Red Sox needed any roster substitutions, went home to Marietta, Ga., and got to work.
He began studying his swing and what Red Sox hitting coaches had tried to help him fix during the season. His hands were too high and he was getting beaten on inside pitches. He was lunging out front and slapping the ball into the ground instead of driving it in the air. There were too many changes to implement midseason amid the daily grind of games, but as he sat with his dad, who’d coached him throughout his childhood, he started to see where he’d gone wrong.
After watching every at-bat he’d taken in 2025, he began studying successful hitters he could emulate: Alex Bregman, a former teammate who’d tried to help him through his struggles, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr., one of the league’s best.
“Bregman’s setup is super quiet, super unique; his hands are low,” Campbell said. “Vladdy is another example, he has his hands up high to start and when the pitcher starts moving, he comes set, ready to hit.”
The video work gave him an idea of what he wanted to do. Next, he had to practice.
Campbell stood in front of the mirror in the living room every day, watching himself with his hands lower, closer to his chest rather than up by his ear. He needed to instill the muscle memory of what it felt like to have his hands in a different spot. Staring in the mirror helped.
“I was just looking in the mirror, trying to break everything down with my upper-body movement,” he said. “I’d look at myself in the mirror and look at my hands. It felt odd because I was used to them up high, so I had to pull them down, to make sure what I felt.”
After weeks of visualization work, he moved to hitting off a tee. It was awkward at first, but he continued the repetition, working out alongside his younger brother Kayden, a high school senior committed to play for Ohio State next year who could be drafted in June.
Aside from lowering his hands, Campbell tried to build a more controlled swing with less motion so he could catch up to pitches more easily. He’d posted a 27 percent strikeout rate over 67 games in Boston last year, hitting .223 with a .664 OPS.
“You don’t really have that much time to mess around,” he said. “Especially with the guys in the majors throwing all these different things that move all different ways at high velo.”
The Red Sox had planned to give Campbell a reset after the season. They told him to take a break from baseball, unwind and focus on adding strength in the gym.
So when hitting coach Pete Fatse messaged Campbell in late October and got a long paragraph text in return, breaking down every detail of his new swing, Fatse knew he needed to see Campbell as soon as possible.
“More than anything, I was taken aback by how convicted he was and understanding that, OK, he learned something from last year outside of just being at the big-league level. He felt something,” Fatse said.
Much of what Campbell showed Fatse sounded familiar — they’d discussed the same issues while he was struggling through Triple A. But when Campbell was in the throes of it, he couldn’t see it for himself.
“Anytime you’re trying to make adjustments over the course of this season, it’s hard,” Fatse said. “I think it was just the time to reflect at the end of the year, he was able to process and watch and come to his own conclusions on it.”
Fatse gave Campbell some drills to help lock in the new swing. Fatse’s approval gave Campbell confidence.
“He was just sitting there listening to me,” Campbell recalled. “I think that was the first time he’d heard me give him a plan and I knew what I wanted to do.”
The hitting coach also suggested something else: A stint in the Puerto Rican winter league.
Campbell would mainly serve as the designated hitter for Criollos de Caguas, a team managed by Red Sox bench coach Ramón Vázquez, and in the same town where manager Alex Cora lived in the offseason. The point was to focus solely on his swing. Over the two and a half weeks in December that Campbell spent in Puerto Rico, a half dozen Red Sox coaches visited him, determined to help him make all his work translate into game action.
Fatse and assistant hitting coach John Soteropulos took turns visiting. Vázquez was by his side daily in games. Outfielders coach Kyle Hudson flew down for a visit, and infielder instructor Jose Flores, who lives in Caguas, stopped by.
“All those guys came down to support me, which was big,” Campbell said. “Getting to know them a little bit better was really big, in my opinion, because I knew them last year, but I didn’t really know them like that. I didn’t really know anybody last year.”
Cora took Campbell out to dinner one night.
“He opened up about the season,” Cora said. “It was really, really good from my standpoint — the ups and downs, the expectations, the contract, Triple A, the big leagues, the adjustments. He’s in a good place now. But I told him, ‘Hey, man, you live five minutes from my house here, but I’m not here to babysit you. I’ve got my boys (to take care of).’”
Campbell didn’t need babysitting. While the winter league isn’t the same level of competition as the majors, the 14 games he spent there were foundational. The first week took some adjusting as he went 2-for-17, but by the second week, he was hitting the ball with authority in the air and seeing the fruits of his labor, going 10-for-32 over his final nine games, returning home on Christmas Eve.
Looks like Kristian Campbell just homered but called a double pic.twitter.com/BpcpOAxZSb
— Stats (@redsoxstats) December 19, 2025
“Your offseason is your offseason,” Fatse said of the winter ball assignment. “You want to go home, you want to be comfortable and for him to say, ‘Yes’, without really thinking about it is like, OK, like he’s ready to embrace another challenge, that’s what’s going to make you a really good player. So it’s a credit to him.
“He said to me, at the end of Puerto Rico, ‘I feel like coming in this year, I know more about myself,’ and I was like, that’s great,” Fatse added. “Because you ask any big leaguer, you’ve got to know who you are, your strengths, and own those strengths, as well as continue to develop. His mindset for me, I don’t want to say it’s in a different place, but in a really good place.”
Campbell had seen failure before. Coming out of high school in Georgia, he was a top talent and played for Georgia Tech. But he struggled so much that he didn’t play freshman year. He buckled down that summer in the Northwoods summer league, had a breakout sophomore season and the Red Sox drafted him in the fourth round. He viewed his rookie season struggles in the majors as akin to his college transformation.
“I think about that sometimes at night, that I’m redoing that process,” Campbell said. “Learning more about myself and learning different things at a different level, taking that time to put extra work in and not come back the same as last year. That would be what, insanity or stupidity? Doing the same thing over and over.”
Campbell succeeded in the early part of his rookie year, winning American League Rookie of the Month in April, largely based on pure talent. But when the league caught up to him, he didn’t have a solid routine.
“Last year was fast and I just went in and it worked for a second, for the first couple months, but once I got in trouble, I couldn’t get out fast enough,” he said. “Now that I know I have a plan, it’ll make it easier if I get in a slump, I’ll be able to get out of it a lot faster.”
As he’s continued his work this spring, the Red Sox have been impressed. He’s gained 13 pounds, opening camp at 216, feeling stronger and hitting the ball in the air more often.
“I feel like I’m doing a really good job so far,” he said. “I don’t have to think about my hands now, they’re just there and my legs are under control. I don’t have that big crouch as much and it’s coming along well. Just breaking it all down and putting it all together.”
But he knows it only matters in games.
He still doesn’t have a natural positional fit on the team. The Red Sox have him working in the outfield this spring, but with four starting outfielders in Roman Anthony, Jarren Duran, Wilyer Abreu and Ceddanne Rafaela, there’s seemingly little room on the roster for him. All four, however, are headed to play in the World Baseball Classic next month, leaving plenty of playing time for Campbell to show what he can do.
“Where we’re at roster-wise, and if we get his bat back, we can find him at-bats,” Cora said.
Campbell has put in the work, and he’s confident it will translate.
Now he hopes that when he looks in the mirror at the end of the season, he’ll see an established big leaguer.
“I obviously wouldn’t have wanted to go through it if I didn’t have to,” Campbell said of his struggles. “But I passed the test for a few months last year, then struggled for two months. That’s motivation for me to get better and work on my craft. I know I can do it, it’s just I have to learn and get better.”