As Pat Murphy's Annual Pick to Click, David Hamilton Has a Role Awaiting Him. What is It?

Because he'll (probably) take up the spot on the Opening Day roster vacated by Andruw Monasterio, and because he was traded (in part) for Monasterio, David Hamilton risks being viewed much the way Monasterio was during his time with the Brewers. If you had to describe his role in a couple of words, you would say, "utility infielder," and that's also how you might encapsulate what Monasterio was for the 2023-25 teams. 

However, there are some crucial differences between the two, as well, and manager Pat Murphy sees Hamilton not only as having a much larger version of Monasterio's role, but as the guy most likely to take what Murphy likes to call "a quantum leap" this season.

"I think he can take his offensive game to a whole other level," Murphy said. "There's so much in there offensively. We gotta get it out of there, and it's not going to be easy, You can't just change habits [in the snap of a finger], but man, is it something."

Hamilton will open the season as the backup shortstop, and also figures to find playing time at third base and (as needed) at second or in the outfield. Nominally, that's similar to what Monasterio brought to the table, but expect Hamilton to play more—much more. For one thing, he bats left-handed, whereas Monasterio is a righty hitter. For another, he's a more adept defender, with all the tools to be a plus shortstop.

"I can see Hamilton playing against right-handers," Murphy said. "All the time. That much—so he's not a Mona."

Monasterio, indeed, often wouldn't start for two weeks at a time, making only occasional appearances as a defensive substitute or pinch-hitter. He only had 135 plate appearances, despite spending the vast majority of the season with the Crew. The role Murphy outlined for Hamilton could easily involve three times that many trips to the plate. That leaves two important questions hanging in the air: Why? And how?

Let's tackle them in that order. Murphy emphasized the offensive upside he and the staff see in the lefty-batting infielder. That upside lies in a couple of different areas. Firstly, he brings elite speed, and a track record of deploying it aggressively. He's stolen 57 bases in his short big-league career, and taken the extra base on teammates' hits over 60% of the time; the league averages under 50%. When Hamilton gets on base, he scores 37% of the time, another mark about 10 percentage points higher than the league's. Though he got just 317 plate appearances in 2024 and 194 in 2025, he ranks ninth for those two seasons in Net Bases Gained, according to Statcast, which apportions responsibility for steals and times caught stealing among runners, pitchers and catchers and turns it into a counting stat that also functions as a de facto value metric for runners. Of the 521 players who had at least 200 stolen-base opportunities over the last two seasons, Hamilton had the fourth-highest attempt rate. His legs make a difference once he's on base.

Of course, the hurdle he has to clear is getting on base, to begin with. On that front, 2025 was a grim step back, as he ran a .257 OBP that cost him the larger role the Red Sox envisioned for him when the season began. Thus, as is true of so many exceptional athletes trying to cross the bridge to become exceptional ballplayers, Hamilton's fate hinges on hitting. 

The good news is that, as Murphy noted, there's some upside to tap into. Under the influence of a Red Sox development infrastructure focused on adding bat speed, Hamilton showed that he could do that, but he's also learned that his fastest swing is not automatically his best. This winter, his work was focused on a simple objective.

"I worked on, pretty much, just hitting line drives," Hamilton said. "That really plays into what [the Brewers] see for me, what they want to do, so it worked out."

That's what every hitter is trying to do, of course, but Hamilton is a good candidate for a rededication to it. His line-drive rate dipped substantially in 2025, as his bat path flattened out. He hit more grounders, made less hard contact and didn't generate any more contact in 2024—an easy explanation for the fact that his numbers cratered.

Fixing that doesn't need to mean overhauling his swing, though. Murphy talked about changing what Hamilton is looking for at the plate; so did the man himself.

"You want to have a good approach when you're at the plate, but it also comes down to the path you're swinging on," he said. "I'm just really focusing on hitting the top of the baseball, and hopefully good things will happen."

That might sound like a recipe for a deleterious number of ground balls, but for big-league hitters, looking for the top of the ball is often a way to ensure that they don't go too far the other way, popping it up or whiffing on it. Hamilton has been hard at work with (among others) hitting coach Dan Vogelbach this spring, with bat path at the center of the discussions.

He's only had 13 balls in play this spring, but his average exit velocity is over 89 MPH, up from a career average of 87 MPH, and he's whiffed on just two of his 25 swings. Meanwhile, hitting the top of the ball hasn't led to wanton worm-burning; he's hit just three of those 13 batted balls at launch angles below 7°.

A player with this much speed, a reasonably patient approach and even a modicum of juice in his bat can be a big help on offense, especially from the left side. That's plenty on the question of why the manager is excited about him, then. Let's tackle the thornier query: How—or, rather, at whose expense?

In short (no pun intended), it might be Hamilton who first threatens the playing time of incumbent shortstop Joey Ortiz, rather than Jett Williams or Cooper Pratt. Murphy has seen some of what he hoped for from Ortiz this spring, and he'll now get a chance to pick the brains of other good players on Novena México in the World Baseball Classic. However, while the organization remains broadly high on Ortiz, Hamilton's left-handedness and his strong defensive chops make him a candidate to play in Ortiz's stead at times. He'll get most of his playing time at third base, splitting those duties with Luis Rengifo, but to match Murphy's lofty vision, he'll have to take some time from Ortiz, too.

Murphy dislikes straightforward platoons, except in unusual and specific situations. Unless he sees no real utility for a right-handed batter except against lefties (and trusts that player to succeed in a very difficult role), he prefers modified platoons wherein he can use the right player for a given matchup every day, balancing the playing time. For instance, if he were to give Hamilton the long side of a platoon at third base, it would marginalize Rengifo—whom the team likes best from the right side, but not exclusively there.

The team will use inputs far beyond handedness to make playing-time decisions, setting it day to day based on things like swing path against the opposing starter and defensive alignment behind their own.

"That's where, I have a lot of information coming at me before a series, saying, 'Hey, when this guy starts, this might be the better guy'," Murphy said. "But the other thing to think about is, the way the game's evolving, the starting pitcher is not going three times around very often. So it's kind of futile to just say, 'This is how we're gonna play it,' because you gotta also plan for the last five innings. The last five innings become crucial that you're set up right."

Hamilton's playing time has to come from somewhere, and it's likely to be mostly on the left side of the infield. That's bad news for Ortiz and Rengifo, but Murphy's philosophy about platoons and playing time could be good news for all three players. Hamilton will have to do more to earn his at-bats than the others, but he's already done some of that work this spring.

The imperfect platoon plan, by the way, might also be the team's answer to the question of how to divvy up time between Andrew Vaughn and Jake Bauers this year. Their depth is more obvious on the pitching side, but if you see Bauers, Hamilton and Brandon Lockridge the way Murphy and the Brewers do, it becomes just as impressive with the hitters.