Over the past four years Rob Refsnyder has filled a valuable role as a lefty-killing outfielder off the bench, and his departure in free agency has left the Red Sox without an obvious replacement.<\/p>\n
But asked on Monday how they could fill Refsnyder\u2019s old role, chief baseball officer Craig Breslow identified two possible candidates, singling out one in particular.<\/p>\n
\u201cNate Eaton is one who comes to mind and did a really nice job for us,\u201d Breslow said. \u201cThe profile is probably a little bit different than Ref in terms of Eaton\u2019s game being built on defense and speed, but he also did contribute especially against left-handed pitching.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd Kristian (Campbell) is someone who has gotten time in the offseason in the outfield and looks really good physically, so we\u2019ll want to get a look at him and give him a chance to show what got everybody so excited about him in \u201924 and at the beginning of \u201925,\u201d Breslow continued. \u201cSo I think we do have options and we\u2019ll continue to explore what might be available from outside the organization as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Originally brought in on a minor league deal after the 2024 season, Eaton spent most of the first half of 2025 in Triple-A before steadily earning more big league opportunities as the year went on. By September he was getting regular playing time, ultimately batting .370 with an .898 OPS over the final month.<\/p>\n
Though Eaton made the most of his playing time, he performed better against righties (.316 average, .797 OPS) than he did against lefties (.279, .673). He can also play in the infield and is expected to be among a number of candidates for a spot on the big league bench.<\/p>\n
On paper Campbell seems less suited for bench duty given that he\u2019s still only 23 and\u00a0is at a stage in his development where he could benefit from regular playing time. His platoon splits in both the majors and minors have also been fairly neutral throughout his career, though Breslow said if they felt having Campbell come off the bench was best for the team, they wouldn\u2019t rule the possibility out.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019re going to do what\u2019s best for the organization and the \u201926 major league team and also what\u2019s best for Kristian,\u201d Breslow said. \u201cAnd if those overlap then that\u2019s the ideal outcome and if they don\u2019t we\u2019ll have to figure out how we want to prioritize things.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over the past four years Rob Refsnyder has filled a valuable role as a lefty-killing outfielder off the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5099],"tags":[154,95,4816,5132,530,54919,5,54922,54921,4,12318,54920],"class_list":{"0":"post-452749","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-bruins","8":"tag-boston","9":"tag-boston-bruins","10":"tag-boston-red-sox","11":"tag-bostonbruins","12":"tag-bruins","13":"tag-craig-breslow","14":"tag-hockey","15":"tag-kristian-campbell","16":"tag-nate-eaton","17":"tag-nhl","18":"tag-red-sox","19":"tag-rob-refsnyder"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116043531152393674","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}