Trevor Story’s Slump and the Never-Ending Saga of the Red Sox Infield

After missing significant chunks of the past three seasons due to injuries — including all but 26 games last year — Trevor Story has been healthy enough to play in 48 of the Red Sox’ first 51 games. He hit well over the first few weeks of the season, but lately he’s fallen into a deep slump. With Boston struggling to climb above .500 but awash in promising young players, he may wind up fighting for his job.

The 32-year-old Story entered this season having played just 163 games since the Red Sox signed him to a six-year, $140 million deal in March 2022. He played just 94 games in 2022 due to a hairline fracture in his right wrist and a contusion on his left heel, then just 43 in ’23 after undergoing internal brace surgery to repair a torn ulnar collateral ligament, and 26 last year before fracturing the glenoid rim and tearing the posterior labrum of his left shoulder. That’s not only a lot of time missed — basically two seasons out of three — but it’s also time missed at a pivotal juncture in his career. Even without catastrophic injuries, not many players are the same at 32 as they were at 28, and the version of Story capable of producing at least 20 homers and 20 steals while providing strong defense at shortstop may be gone.

Through Wednesday, Story has hit for just a 65 wRC+, the seventh-lowest mark among AL qualifiers. That’s bad enough, but his recent performance looks even even worse if we simply split his game log down the middle, with 24 games played on each side:

That’s a pretty unhappy tale for Story. He’s always been rather strikeout-prone, fanning an NL-high 191 times in 2017, and ranking among the NL’s top five in strikeouts in each of the next two seasons as well, but over time, he trimmed his tendency to swing and miss, from a high of 34.4% in 2017 to 23.4% in ’21. He’s been above 30% in each of his injury-abbreviated seasons in Boston; his current rate is actually his lowest in that span by an eyelash, though it still ranks third among AL qualifiers, and his total of 61 strikeouts ranks first. Unlike the two qualified AL hitters with higher rates, Logan O’Hoppe and Byron Buxton, Story hasn’t been nearly productive enough to ignore all of those strikeouts.

A look at various breakdowns shows that Story’s offense is basically… breaking down. He’s chasing far more pitches than ever, swinging and missing more than ever, hitting the ball on the ground more than ever, pulling the ball less than ever (particularly in the air), and absolutely getting eaten alive by four-seam fastballs. Even with all of that, his overall quality of contact isn’t bad — but it’s been in too short of a supply to prop up his production.

Selectivity seems to be a particular problem. When Story played for the Rockies, he swung at 48.6% of all pitches, and 28% of those outside the zone, rates that were only slightly above league average. He had his ups and downs in those years, big home run totals and high slugging percentages that weren’t always so impressive in the context of his home ballpark, but for the most part, his approach worked. Over his first three seasons in Boston, he began swinging a bit more often (50.4% for 2022–24), but his chase rate took a bigger leap, to 33.4%, and his production receded. This year, he’s swinging at 55.6% of pitches and chasing 37.8%; the latter rate ranks in just the sixth percentile, and the combination of those two rates suggests he’s pressing, expanding his zone and trying to do too much. And of course, he’s missing a whole lot. Story’s overall swinging strike rate of 16.2% is over two points higher than his 2022–24 rate with Boston (14.1%), and nearly four points ahead of his rate with Colorado (12.4%).

In or out of the zone, Story is particularly struggling against four-seamers. He’s whiffing on 22.8% of those fastball while hitting just .164 and slugging .180 against them. His expected numbers against the pitch (.182 xBA, .285 xSLG) don’t make a much stronger case. His Statcast run value on fastballs (-7) is in a virtual tie with Michael Toglia for the majors’ lowest.

“All the metrics, all the information that we have — the bat speed is there, his hands are where they’re supposed to be. Everything looks OK,” said manager Alex Cora of Story on Saturday. “The only thing we’re not doing right now is hitting the ball forward.”

“Just missing his pitches,” Cora continued. “That’s the bottom line. I know he’s swinging a lot, but he’s getting pitches in the zone and he’s fouling them off. And after that, [pitchers] get to work… 2-0, 3-1, [he] misses his pitches and then they bury him. Early on, he wasn’t doing that. He was actually connecting and hitting the ball hard. And lately it hasn’t happened.”

To Cora’s point, Story has hit .265/.478/.460 after the count gets to 2-0 for his career. But this year, in 19 plate appearances that have started that way, he’s hitting just .125/.263/.188; his 32 wRC+ in that context is the fifth lowest among players with at least 15 PA that have reached 2-0. Along those same lines, where he’s a career .251/.573/.520 hitter after 3-1, he’s 0-for-6 with four walks and a hit-by-pitch in such situations this year, and hitting .156/.341/.281 in 41 PA when ahead in the count.

Once Story does make contact — at nearly a career-low rate (70.8%) — things aren’t exactly going great. He’s hitting more grounders than fly balls, something he’s never done before; his 48.4% groundball rate is 14 points above his carer mark, while his 1.41 groundball-to-fly-ball ratio is almost double his 0.79 career one. His 31.3% pull rate and 7% pulled air rate are both the lowest of his career; the latter is less than half of last year’s previous career low, 14.8%. Given that Story has hit .466 and slugged 1.717 on pulled air balls during his career, you can see how that might be a problem.

Given this litany, it’s at least a little surprising to find that some of Story’s contact stats are pretty good. His 89.6-mph average exit velocity only ranks in the 43rd percentile, but his 10.2% barrel rate is in the 58th, and his 46.9% hard-hit rate in the 70th. His bat speed is a concern — it ranks in the 27th percentile — but even though he rarely squares up a ball (18.7%, fourth percentile), he does make some pretty solid contact. Again, the bigger problem is that he just doesn’t make enough of it.

On the defensive side, Story has already played more innings at shortstop this year (418 2/3) than in any season since coming to the Red Sox; he spent 2022 at second base while Xander Bogaerts played shortstop. His defensive metrics aren’t in a good place even within the small sample (-3 DRS, -2 FRV). He has never posted a negative DRS before, and only twice has he been in the red with regards to his FRV. This season is a major step down from the last two years, when he combined for 10 DRS and 8 FRV across 541 2/3 innings at shortstop.

Story’s struggles on both sides of the ball feed into Boston’s largest problem this year — a lack of production at any infield spot besides third base, where the mid-February arrival of free agent Alex Bregman shook things up in ways that continue to reverberate. Oddly enough, the way the dominoes are falling could help preserve Story’s job at a time when the prospect of treating him as a sunk cost, or at least moving him into a bench role, has been raised by local media. He’s signed through 2027, and still owed about $70 million, including $55 million after this season.

With six losses in their last nine games, the Red Sox are now 25-26, and between second base (net 0.2 WAR), shortstop (-0.1 WAR), and first base (-0.6 WAR), they’ve been worth a combined half-win below replacement level at those three spots. First base has not only been their deepest sinkhole — the four players the team has used there have combined to hit .218/.286/.332 (68 wRC+) — but it’s become the new center of the ongoing drama. Starter Triston Casas scuffled over the first five weeks of the season before rupturing his left patellar tendon on May 2, which required season-ending surgery. At some point not long afterwards, the Red Sox brass asked Devers — who had been displaced from third base by the arrival of Bregman — to learn first base on the fly. The slugger, still frustrated by the way the Red Sox sprung DH duty upon him but lately hitting the snot out of the ball, declined. Meanwhile, Casas’ backup, Romy Gonzalez, has been out since May 7 with a left quad contusion, and he recently suffered a setback. While Nick Sogard and Abraham Toro have shared the position since then, last week, rookie Kristian Campbell began working out at the position, too.

Recall that the 22-year-old Campbell won the second base job in spring training and inked a $60 million extension just a week into his major league career. He’s still fairly new to the keystone, having played 51 games there in the minors and 34 in college — and it’s shown. His -8 DRS and -3 FRV both rank as the majors’ second-lowest marks in their respective categories, ahead of only the Nationals’ Luis García Jr. His offense has fallen off drastically with a 5-for-53 May, lowering his overall line to .231/.320/.378 (95 wRC+).

It’s not a done deal that Campbell will take over first base. “He’s learning how to play second base at this level… this is still a work in progress,” Cora said last week. “Obviously, we’re throwing this at him, but we believe he can actually digest it. This is not like [Campbell] is playing first base tomorrow. We just want to see the footwork, how he moves, and go from there.”

If Campbell does take to first base, it would open the door for the team to recall Marcelo Mayer, a 50-FV prospect who was ranked no. 57 on our Top 100 Prospects list in February. The 22-year-old Mayer, the heir apparent to Story, played shortstop for all but two of his professional defensive appearances prior to this season, and dabbled at third in April, but lately, he’s begun getting second base reps at Triple-A Worcester, where the plan is for him to play the position three or four games a week. On the offensive side, he’s hit respectably but not exceptionally (.265/.344/.452, 109 wRC+).

“It only makes sense to put those [developments] together [to see a path to the big leagues],” Mayer said on Tuesday. “For me, [I’m] just doing whatever I can every single day to get ready over there so when my time comes, I’m able to help the team.”

Such a plan would not preclude Mayer cutting into Story’s time at shortstop if the latter’s bat doesn’t perk up, but it would at least buy the veteran time. If the Red Sox do find themselves in contention, they might end up dealing for a first baseman, bumping Campbell — who has also played five games in center field and two in left — back into an increasingly crowded second base/outfield pool. That group could also include 21-year-old prospect Roman Anthony (no. 2 in our February Top 100), who’s been raking at a .316/.449/.510 (150 wRC+) clip while playing all three outfield positions at Worcester.

Story has missed so much time since signing with the Red Sox that our expectations of his capabilities may be outmoded. Our rest-of-season Depth Charts projections (81 wRC+, 0.9 WAR) don’t paint a pretty picture, but right now even those numbers would be an improvement on his production. The Red Sox may soon have to reckon with the reality of this chapter of the Story story.