2025 In A Discarded-On-The-Dugout-Floor Nutshell
In a season that started with infield candidates ranging from Alex Bregman, Trevor Story, Kristian Campbell, Triston Casas, Rafael Devers, and Marcelo Mayer, David Hamilton managed to make it into 91 games.
That’s way too many! His large presence in box scores is the byproduct of a tumultuous year in the infield.
The Good
David Hamilton is fast, and actually plays good defense when used at second base. If he’s the last guy on your roster, he’s not a bad guy to have around.
The Bad
Everything else. His bat is poor to at times horrific, his baserunning isn’t anywhere near as good as it should be for his speed, and if he’s playing on the left side side of the infield, you’re now getting subpar performance from both his bat and his glove. Unfortunately, all of these things were on full display for a few different swaths of the season.
Best (and worst) Game or Moment
Because baseball is baseball, anybody can have a wonderful, unexpected moment on any given night. It’s part of what makes the sport so great! This happened for David Hamilton back on April 16th when he hit this solo home run against the Rays that turned out to be the only run of the game in a 1-0 win.
Unfortunately, there’s also another game that stands out in my mind. Back on June 24th against the Angels, the Red Sox lost 3-2 in ten innings. One of the two runs they scored actually came in the top of that tenth inning thanks to a Marcelo Mayer RBI single. David Hamilton was then tasked with trying to bunt him over, and, uh ….. let’s be nice and say it didn’t go well.
If you have David Hamilton’s skillset, you absolutely need to be better at small ball than this!
The Big Question/2026 and Beyond
Oddly, for a guy on the bottom of the roster, David Hamilton is kind of a good barometer for how the offseason goes. With so many question marks in the infield going into the winter about Bregman, Story, Cases, Campbell and Mayer, David Hamilton’s presence (or lack of presence) will be a big litmus test. If he’s around as a fringe piece (or squeezed out completely), Craig Breslow and company did well. If he gets into anywhere near as many games as he did in 2025, something went very, very wrong.
Also, Hamilton should work on becoming a much better baserunner. This is his ticket to having a career at this level. With his sprint speed ranking second fastest on the entire 2025 Red Sox roster behind only Nate Eaton, he should be a weapon on the basepaths making opponents nervous. Instead, he spent the year making Red Sox fans nervous when he got on base. He was caught stealing six times (against 22 stolen bases), picked off four times, and thrown out at third twice. If he can make improvements here and keep locking down his second base defense so the manger has a consistent place to put him, he could be a useful utility player going forward.
