The Boston Red Sox are promoting top infield prospect Marcelo Mayer.
Boston’s long-awaited promotion of Mayer, the No. 28 prospect in baseball according to The Athletic’s Keith Law, comes as third baseman Alex Bregman heads to the injury list with a right quad strain. Bregman injured his quad while running to first base Friday night.
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The potential loss of Bregman for the foreseeable future is a blow to the Red Sox lineup, as he was hitting .299 with a .938 OPS in 51 games. But it opens the door for one of the most anticipated Red Sox prospect promotions in recent memory.
The 22-year-old Mayer, the No. 4 overall draft pick in the 2021 MLB Draft, has been near the top of the Red Sox system for the past four years, his ascent slowed by injuries along the way.
This season, however, Mayer has proven he’s more than ready for the majors. In 43 games for Triple-A Worcester, he hit .271 with an .818 OPS and nine homers, five doubles and a triple while providing fluid defense at three infield positions.
Outside of two Double-A games at third base last season, Mayer played almost exclusively at shortstop from 2021 through 2024, but the Red Sox began expanding his defensive versatility this season in an attempt to find him a spot on the major-league roster. Though Mayer’s offensive consistency and power have improved through the years, his fluid defense, particularly at shortstop, has been just as impressive.
This season in Worcester, Mayer has played 29 games at shortstop, nine at second and four at third base.
Manager Alex Cora offered high praise for Mayer in spring training.
“Good defender, he can move, he can play shortstop at the big-league level,” Cora said in March. “He’s going to get stronger with time. But we’ve seen big shortstops, big guys play shortstop in the past. He’s a good one. He drives the ball to left-center. There’s a few things that he knows that he needs to work on offensively. But the more you see him, you get excited about it.”
Law provided this assessment of the infielder as he prepares to make his Red Sox debut: “Mayer still hasn’t addressed that stiff front leg that I wrote about last offseason, which means he still can’t reliably get to pitches down, and as a result he’s whiffing just over half the time he swings at pitches in the lower third of the zone or below it, rising to two-thirds of the time on sliders and cutters. He’s got to fix that before he comes to the majors or pitchers are just going to slider him to death.”
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Mayer’s season ended early last year as he dealt with a low back strain that prevented him from debuting in Triple A despite a promotion in early August. In 77 games at Double-A Portland last year, he hit .307 with an .850 OPS and eight home runs. In 2023, Mayer dealt with a shoulder injury that limited him to 73 games, and in 2022, he battled a wrist sprain and played 91 games.
This spring, Mayer, along with No. 1 overall prospect Roman Anthony and current Red Sox infielder Kristian Campbell, spent all of spring training with the big-league club. They all impressed the team with their maturity and poise in handling major-league hitting, as well as meshing with a big-league clubhouse.
But when the season began, Campbell was the lone prospect who made the big league roster, with Anthony and Mayer headed to Triple A to continue refining their games.
Now, Mayer joins Campbell in Boston.
Mayer is likely to see time at third base with infielder Nick Sogard also handling reps at the corner spot. Since first baseman Triston Casas’ season-ending knee injury on May 3, the Red Sox have worked with Campbell at first base, partially to open second base for Mayer. Now, with Bregman down, Mayer figures to see time at both second and third, and he may see time at shortstop with Trevor Story struggling for consistency.
Either way, the Marcelo Mayer era in Boston has begun.
(Photo of Mayer during spring training: WooSox Photo / Ashley Green / Imagn Images)
