Top Red Sox prospect Marcelo Mayer is a “full go” and will be part of the club’s rookie development program that gets underway next week, according to WEEI.com’s Rob Bradford.
Mayer missed the final six-plus weeks of the 2023 minor-league season due to a left shoulder injury he suffered much earlier in the year and attempted to play through. As the 21-year-old shortstop explained to Bradford back in September, it occurred on the road in early May, while he was still playing with High-A Greenville.
“It was May 7, we were playing in High-A in Asheville,” Mayer recalled on Audacy’s ‘Baseball Isn’t Boring’ podcast. I was 3-for-3 and I needed a triple for the cycle. I ended up hitting a ball in the gap. I tried to leg it out for the triple. I ended up stumbling past second base and fell. I didn’t really feel it on impact and then the next day I wake up and can’t lift my shoulder at all. I ended up taking that week off, come back playing a little too soon because the competitor in me wanted to play and didn’t want to rest. So I got used to playing hurt and ever since then it became a cycle and never really got better.”
As he alluded to, Mayer took some time off following that game in Asheville and did not return to action until May 14. To that point in the season, the left-handed hitter had batted a stout .337/.414/.582 with 10 doubles, one triple, four home runs, 23 RBIs, 17 runs scored, four stolen bases, 13 walks, and 24 strikeouts in 23 games (111 plate appearances) with the Drive.
Upon being inserted back into Greenville’s lineup, however, Mayer went just 9-for-47 (.192) with three homers and 11 runs driven in over his next 12 games. Despite those struggles, he was promoted to Double-A Portland on May 30. Things did not get any easier from there.
Facing more advanced pitching in the upper-minors for the first time in his professional career, Mayer slumped to a .189/.254/.355 slash line in 43 games with (190 plate appearances) with Boston’s Eastern League affiliate. He still managed six home runs and 20 RBIs in that stretch, but something was clearly amiss.
After representing the Red Sox at July’s All-Star Futures Game in Seattle, for instance, Mayer managed just 10 hits in 14 games with the Sea Dogs. Once the calendar flipped from July to August, he went 0-for-9 with four strikeouts in what would go down as his final two games of the year against the Bowie BaySox.
“It’s a good learning lesson on my end,” Mayer said. “Looking back at it, I should have definitely taken care of it. You’re here to play and obviously it didn’t work out for me because I thought it was going to get better over time, but it just kept getting worse and worse and worse so I decided to say something to the trainers.”
On August 5, Mayer was placed on Portland’s 7-day injured list with left shoulder inflammation. A little over a month later, the Red Sox elected to shut down Mayer for the remainder of the year, with the goal of getting him back to 100 percent for a normal offseason the main motivator behind that decision.
“When it comes to my swing, my swing was just giving out every single time,” explained Mayer. “The littlest thing can impact your swing and you start compensating somewhere else, which is not a good thing, which is why I think I learned a lot from this experience. But as a player there is one place you want to be and it’s on the field.”
According to The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier, who also compiles the Red Sox’ organizational rankings for Baseball America, Mayer was ultimately diagnosed with a left shoulder impingement, which required a pain-killing injection in September.
In a conversation with The Athletic’s Jen McCaffrey, Red Sox director of player development said that playing in the Arizona Fall League was “a possibility or option” for Mayer, but the club decided against it. Instead, as noted by Speier, the California native spent the fall rehabbing in Fort Myers before returning home to Chula Vista on a strength program.
To that end, it now appears as though Mayer is back at full strength. That being the case because — in the words of Bradford — his shoulder is “not a hindrance.”
Originally selected by the Red Sox with the fourth overall pick in the 2021 amateur draft out of Eastlake High School, Mayer comes into the new year ranked by both Baseball America and MLB Pipeline as the No. 1 prospect in Boston’s farm system.
While the 2023 campaign ended on a down note offensively, Mayer still managed to impress in other areas of the game. In separate polls ran by Baseball America, the 6-foot-2, 188-pound infielder was tabbed by league managers as the best defensive shortstop in both the Eastern and South Atlantic Leagues after committing a total of 10 errors over 602 innings at the all-important position between his stops at Greenville and Portland last season.
Though his name has frequently come up in trade rumors this winter, Mayer — who does not turn 22 until December — is expected to return to Portland for the start of the 2024 season. If he remains in the organization and stays healthy, Mayer could be on the fast track to making his major-league debut at some point later this year depending on how things shake out.
In the interim, Mayer and several other top prospects will take part in the Red Sox’ aforementioned rookie development program, which is scheduled to begin at Fenway Park next Monday. This annual five-day program typically consists of workouts at an indoor facility at Boston College, media training, and community service around the city, among other endeavors.
To complement the program, Mayer and nine other invitees (Roman Anthony, Kyle Teel, Richard Fitts, Chase Meidroth, Nick Yorke, Wikelman Gonzalez, Luis Perales, Nathan Hickey, and Justin Slaten) are also scheduled to attend Winter Weekend — the Red Sox’ annual fan fest — at the end of the week in Springfield.
(Picture of Marcelo Mayer: Maddie Malhotra/Boston Red Sox/Getty Images)