In the wake of the Boston Red Sox's April 25 spring cleaning, during which it fired manager Alex Cora and six other coaches including hitting coach Pete Fatse, blame for the firings has been pointed in multiple directions. Cora's management, poor player development and even worse roster construction from chief baseball officer Craig Breslow have all been floated as factors that led to the many dismissals.
There have been rumors that Boston's personnel firings have been weeks to months in the making and for multiple different reasons. The strangest (most insane) reason includes a player Red Sox fans may not have thought about for a while: Kristian Campbell.
"Some Red Sox staffers believed even last season that Breslow wanted to make wholesale changes to replace coaches he’d inherited when he took over at Fenway Park after the 2023 season, and many Red Sox players were well aware that Breslow had questioned the abilities and methods of hitting coach Pete Fatse and his lieutenants. That group in particular was perceived to have absorbed outsized blame for the failure of prospect Kristian Campbell to achieve bullish internal projections," reported Jen McCaffrey, Chad Jennings, Patrick Mooney and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (subscription required).
Yes, the development of a then-22-year-old top prospect, who is still 23 years old, was used as a metric to determine Fatse's fitness for his job. There are plenty of other, more important factors that should've been used to make such a call, like Boston's horrendous swing decisions and general inability to hit the ball in the air, for example.
Sources cite Kristian Campbell's stalled development as reason for firing multiple Red Sox coaches
The Red Sox front office's throwing Campbell under the bus also shows just how much pressure has been piled onto Boston's top prospects in recent years. The Red Sox used Campbell as their Opening Day second baseman in 2025 after just 137 games of minor league experience over two seasons — that's already an insane amount of pressure, as it's been well established that second base is Boston's most volatile position since the Sox have lacked a consistent player there since 2017.
It wasn't Cora or Faste's fault that the Red Sox extended Campbell after seeing four major league games from him. But the extra money on his contract added even more stress to his early big league career and a higher demand for results.
Campbell was one of Boston's hottest hitters at the start of last season (.313/.420/.515 slash line through April 29) before the league caught up to him. A similar phenomenon has occurred with Roman Anthony, who has far higher expectations on his shoulders than Campbell ever did. Anthony is slashing .208/.339/.292 with 32 strikeouts over 26 games, in direct contrast to his (unfair) appointment as the face of the franchise at 21 years old.
The Red Sox's singling out of Campbell as an example of coaching failures despite his relative inexperience and young age is a cruel example used as justification for firing Boston's entire coaching staff. There are many other reasons for Breslow's decisions, but this one is his own fault for extending Campbell prematurely in the first place.
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