How Alex Bregman is adjusting to life in a new clubhouse

On the day Alex Bregman met Roman Anthony and Marcelo Mayer this spring, the two Boston Red Sox uber-prospects greeted him with a proposition: Let us play student to your teacher. Bregman, who joined the Red Sox days earlier on a three-year, $120 million contract, has cultivated a reputation as perhaps the smartest baseball mind in the game, a combination of film hound, analytics dork, eagle-eyed scout and pure knower of ball gleaned from a wildly successful big league career. As Mayer put it in his unique verbiage: "Hey, bro, do you just want to marinate in the clubhouse and talk shop?'"

"It made me laugh," Bregman said, "because, like, 'marinate in the clubhouse and talk shop' -- it sounds like me when I was 21. All I wanted to do is just sit in the clubhouse for four hours after a game and talk about baseball."

All these years later -- having played more than 1,000 games, whacked 200 home runs and worn the countless slings and arrows of those who can't bring themselves to look past his role on the Houston Astros team that cheated amid its championship run in 2017 -- Bregman is still in love with the game. When his wife, Reagan, was about to give birth to their second child in mid-April, Bregman told teammates he didn't plan to take full advantage of Major League Baseball's three-game paternity leave. That day in Tampa, Florida, he went 5-for-5 with two home runs, flew to Boston, saw the birth of Bennett Matthew Bregman, and returned to the team. He missed one game.

At 31, Bregman is scarcely different from the baseball obsessive who brute-forced his way to the big leagues within a year of being drafted and has logged the second most postseason plate appearances since. Even as others seek his wisdom, he still fancies himself an apprentice, an explorer with an endless font of curiosity-- someone who watches closely and studies ceaselessly, capable of making adjustments from pitch to pitch, at-bat to at-bat, game to game. Bregman converses in English and Spanish, with hitters and pitchers, finding himself at the intersection of the Venn diagrams that illustrate divisions in plenty of clubhouses.

"It's consistent ball talk," said Garrett Crochet, the Red Sox ace also acquired over the winter. "When I'm not starting, in between innings, he'll come over on the bench and pull out the iPad and be like, 'I was looking for this right here. He's going to give it to me the next at-bat,' and then [the pitcher] does, and it's a single or double."

Bregman's instincts come from a place of necessity. His biographical details don't scream big leaguer. In a game increasingly inhabited by physically imposing athletes, he stands a couple of inches shy of 6 feet. He grew up in New Mexico, nobody's idea of a baseball hotbed. Bregman's love of the game has fueled him every step of the way, from starring at SEC powerhouse LSU as a freshman to being selected No. 2 in the 2015 MLB draft and becoming a mainstay in a loaded Astros lineup since his debut as a 22-year-old.

"His energy is very contagious," said Red Sox first baseman Abraham Toro, who also spent parts of three seasons as Bregman's teammate in Houston. "He's always talking about baseball. Even when the game's over, he's talking about baseball. And it makes you want to get better."

Bregman started his career picking the brains of veteran teammates such as Justin Verlander, Martin Maldonado, Brian McCann and Carlos Correa in his quest for improvement. Now, a decade later, he is relishing the opportunity to foster those discussions with the next generation of players in his new home.

"Baseball talk is the key," Bregman said. "Just talking the game with your teammates, coaches, talking about the pitcher you're facing or the hitters that our pitchers are facing, how you see it and how they see it. And then if you see anything in their game or they see anything in your game, you go back and forth on how guys can improve.

"It's energizing, to be honest with you. Especially it being a bunch of younger guys who are trying to improve the same way I am. I feel like I'm young and want to get a lot better. And I feel like my best baseball's ahead of me."

As the offseason languished on, it became increasingly clear that Bregman would have to find a different home than the only clubhouse he'd ever known. When Bregman's primary suitors finally came into focus, the favorites were the Detroit Tigers -- managed by A.J. Hinch, with whom he spent four seasons in Houston -- and the Red Sox.

In the final hours, Bregman asked Boston for its best offer -- one the Red Sox had loaded up with annual salary and opt-outs after each of the first two seasons in hopes of proving sufficiently alluring.

It was a staggering deal for someone who over the previous five seasons was plenty good (.261/.350/.445 with 92 home runs) but objectively not a $40 million-a-year player. But Bregman and the Red Sox both believed he could get himself back to the version of himself from 2018 and 2019 -- the one who posted more than 16 wins above replacement and ranked among the game's elite.

Bregman accepted. And that's when Boston's hitting machine went to work. Red Sox coaches already had put together a presentation to explain how and why he needed to fix his swing. Over time, Bregman had developed almost imperceptible bad habits. The timing of Bregman loading his hands was too late and too fast. Moving his hands as the ball left the pitcher's hand left him vulnerable, and never did Bregman possess the sort of bat velocity to make up for it.

"After those [successful] years, it was like, I wanna be better, I wanna be better, I wanna be better, I wanna be better," Bregman said. "So I started trying to change things and improve, improve, improve instead of doing what made me who I am and just refining what I was already doing at the time."

Red Sox hitting coach Peter Fatse and assistants Dillon Lawson and Ben Rosenthal loved the simplicity of Bregman's move in the batter's box, but they saw more potential and knew swing adjustments would be necessary. Change doesn't exactly suit Bregman. He is the guy who eats the same meal every day and never deviates from his hitting schedule. But he is also the son of two lawyers and at least open to practical solutions, so he was willing to hear out his new coaching staff.

The Red Sox worked with Bregman to address the flaw in the swing: It all started, they agreed, with a poor setup and load. Rather than exclusively focus on bat-speed training, Bregman committed to loading earlier and rebuilt his swing in a place that's heaven to baseball rats like him: the batting cage.

"Get back to doing what I did in my best years, which was to focus on being the best in the cage that day," Bregman said. "Not worrying about if I'm hitting well on the field; more like, can I master the f---ing cage today? Can I square the ball up? Can I execute the drill in the cage and then go play in the game? As opposed to, I need to go 4-for-4 tonight with two doubles and a homer. I'm gonna be the best hitter before the game in the cage, and then I'm gonna go out and just try and repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat."

Bregman had found his greatest success when he followed a few cues: load slowly, take the bat's knob past the ball in front of the plate and strike the inside part of the ball. Finding that simplicity in his purpose and swing would be the goals. He did not need to set specific production expectations, instead trusting process over outcome. He would fix the swing in time for the numbers to reflect it. When the ball started jumping off Bregman's bat again, he knew he had hacked himself successfully. His average exit velocity over the first seven regular-season weeks with the Red Sox jumped by 3 mph. His hard-hit rate spiked to 48.5% -- up eight percentage points over his previous career high. He is hitting .304./381/.567 with 10 home runs and 32 RBIs in 43 games.

"Honestly," Bregman said, "I feel like this has been the best I've hit in my career."

Bregman's desire for improvement does not begin and end with himself. When he recently overheard Fatse and Ceddanne Rafaela, the Red Sox's talented 24-year-old super-utility man, talking about ways to improve Rafaela's poor swing decisions, he couldn't help but chime in.

"We were talking about simplicity of the load, and [Bregman] just goes, 'One, two,'" Fatse said. "One, be ready to hit. Two, be in a position to get your swing off. And it was amazing. It just clicked. In the dugout, we'll scream: 'one, two.' Rafa's walking up plate: 'one, two, one, two.' [Bregman] will be screaming it from the dugout, and it's simple, but it's his ability to connect with everybody that makes him a unicorn in that regard. He cares so much about his teammates. He wants to win.

"It's just the urgency behind it," Fatse continued. "If he has something, he's going to go right to you and give it to you. And whether it's something with his swing or if we're talking about somebody else's approach or swing or matchup-related stuff, he's ready to engage in the conversation immediately. There's no waiting around. When you have that level of urgency, everybody responds to it."

In much the same way that his advice has rejuvenated Rafaela -- who has four two-hit games in his past eight and has struck out only twice -- Bregman's arrival has changed the Boston clubhouse by bringing to it an edge that left with the 2019 retirement of Dustin Pedroia, the second baseman who was every bit the heart of the Red Sox's three most recent championships as David Ortiz. Bregman grew up idolizing Pedroia for his outsized production from an undersized body. He was unaware of the other qualities they share: the encyclopedic knowledge of the game, the capacity to evoke fits of uproarious laughter at team dinners, the desire to help others find the best version of themselves the same way he did.

"Everyone understands [Bregman's] process is just to win that game and he'll do whatever it takes that day or night to win," Red Sox outfielder Rob Refsnyder said. "He'll adjust his swing, his setup, his thoughts, his scouting, everything. It's all about just winning that game. I think guys are a lot more receptive to him, and obviously he's a winner and he works so hard. It's easy to take advice from somebody like that because you know it's from a genuine, we're-just-trying-to-win-this-game [perspective]."

Winning comes in plenty of forms, be it a 5-for-5, two-homer day or an 0-for-4 bummer in which Bregman does the work with his glove or legs. By now, his teammates know that no matter how early they show up to the ballpark, Bregman will be there first, his white pants already on, ready to attack the day. He's always happy to pore over information and develop a detailed scouting report, Crochet said, "based off of analytics, video, prior at-bats. For him, it's really a happy medium of all three. I feel like he's able to get on TruMedia -- that's our site with all the pitch-usage breakdown by count and pitch-frequency maps -- and window a guy or sit on a specific pitch, specific spot. It's incredibly impressive."

The Red Sox aren't taking for granted the time they get with Bregman. As much as they've loved the knowledge and production, they recognize that a seasonlong jag almost certainly will precipitate him opting out of his contract. Bregman now knows he can replicate for other teams what he developed in Houston, where he was lionized by local fans amid the festering fallout of the cheating scandal in 29 other stadiums.

If this does wind up as a Boston gap year, a la Adrian Beltre, Bregman's influence will continue to reverberate. He did spend time marinating with Anthony and Mayer -- and also bought them, and a host of other top Red Sox prospects, tailored suits to help them feel comfortable in a major league setting. By Bregman's second week with the Red Sox, the kids were already giving him grief, wondering aloud if he had gray pants in his spring training locker -- an implication that he's too big-time to travel for a Grapefruit League road game. Never one to be told what he is or isn't, Bregman went for a 90-minute bus ride with Anthony and Mayer from Fort Myers to Sarasota.

Bregman's connection to the Red Sox is generational. His grandfather was the general counsel for the Washington Senators and helped hire Ted Williams, who spent the entirety of his 19-year Hall of Fame playing career with Boston, as their manager. His father, Sam -- currently running for governor in New Mexico -- grew up around the Senators and Williams. And it sparked a fondness for baseball he passed on to his son.