On the surface, the swing appears extremely disconnected. And yet, with startling frequency, Campbell has made outrageously hard contact throughout his first full professional season.
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“You see him in the box and it’s an awkward kind of swing sometimes,” relayed High A Greenville manager Iggy Suarez. “I heard the opposing dugout when I’m coaching third, like, ‘How is he hitting the ball so hard? He looks like Hunter Pence!’
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“But when he makes contact, it’s a different sound. It’s solid. Big leaguers make that sound.”
Campbell, 21, who splits his time between second base and center field, spent 40 games this year with the Drive and tore up the South Atlantic League, hitting .306/.418/.558 with 8 homers and 21 extra-base hits. He had an on-base streak of 34 games.
The performance was sufficiently dominant that the Sox felt compelled to promote Campbell this week to Double A Portland, where he went 4 for 13 with a triple in his first three games.
Yet that doesn’t tell the entire story. Campbell hasn’t just been producing — he has pulverized the ball. For all of the moving parts in his swing, at the point of contact he is balanced and funneling tremendous strength into his barrel. The result?
“He hits the crap out of the ball,” said Sox farm director Brian Abraham.
For Campbell, the idea that he’s suddenly capturing imaginations for his strength and power represents unfamiliar territory. When the Sox selected him in the fourth round out of Georgia Tech last year following an excellent redshirt freshman season (.376/.484/.549 with four homers in 49 games), his focus was putting the ball in play, then using his plus speed to his benefit.
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But the Sox believed there was more to his game. The 6-foot-3-inch Campbell was a wiry-strong 200 pounds when he was drafted. The Sox wanted him to add to that strength and tap into it to drive the ball.
After a brief but impressive pro debut in 2023 (.309/.441/.471 between rookie ball and Greenville), Campbell spent nearly all of the offseason in Fort Myers, working relentlessly onhis strength and conditioning, as well as his swing. By spring training, he was roughly 210 pounds, uncoiling into the ball ferociously, and hitting rockets.
“Just with my size, the player I can be, I feel like I’ve got the potential to be a five-tool player,” said Campbell. “And one of the main parts I just kind of wanted to show more going into the future was power, because I never really showed power in college.
“It’s definitely been different. I’m getting more used to it. I’m just trying to hit the ball more in the air so I can get more doubles and home runs.”
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Campbell said he’s changed his target as a hitter. In college, he wanted to hit the ball up the middle at the pitcher or lower. Now, he’s taking aim at the batter’s eye in center field, looking to hit the bottom half of the ball rather than the top half.
In a short period of time, his results have changed in striking fashion. Before this year, he’d never hit a ball over 106 miles per hour. This year, he has topped out at 114. (Among Sox big leaguers, only Wilyer Abreu has hit a ball that hard this year.) The top 10 percent of his balls in play have averaged 106 — up from 102 last year. He’s not just hitting homers but moonshots.
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He’s still adjusting to the kind of hitter he’s becoming.
“The jump is still surprising,” he said. “I know I put in the work every day to be where I am today, but it’s honestly surprising, just the strides and jumps I’ve made over this time.
“The coaches and staff really pushed me to be a lot better. The expectation is a lot different. They’ve pushed me to be where I am today.”
The performance has Campbell flying up the rankings. He cracked the top 10 in SoxProspects.com’s June rankings, and if he sustains his tremendous start in Double A, it’s possible to imagine him finishing the year closer to the top five in the system. That ascent comes without guarantees, particularly given that his swing adjustments have come with a spiking strikeout rate (25 percent).
Evaluators are divided on where his path will lead. Some believe the swing will have too much swing-and-miss for him to emerge as more than a power-hitting part-timer. Others see incredible bat speed and athleticism as well as enough feel for the barrel to suggest not only a regular but potentially a standout.
“Even if the swing isn’t that pretty, hitters are going to hit,” said one evaluator. “This dude showed me he can hit.”
At the least, less than a year since he was drafted, Campbell is commanding attention for the fact that he has altered his development trajectory and moved quickly to reach the upper levels while showing considerable potential.
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“His swing is incredibly fast,” said Abraham. “He drives the ball to all fields. He has really good plate discipline. He’s a hitter that does a lot of things really well. It’s exciting to see what he could potentially do and already what he’s done.”
Alex Speier can be reached at alex.speier@globe.com. Follow him @alexspeier.
