FORT MYERS, Fla. — Red Sox infielder/outfielder Nate Eaton didn’t have a favorite Major League Baseball team as a kid until he walked into one of his 8U travel ball teammate’s bedroom.
“I looked up to him because he was one of the best guys on the team, like way better than me,” Eaton said at JetBlue Park. “It was the first time I went over to his house. Go into his room and he’s got nothing but Red Sox stuff — him and his brother.“
That moment unlocked the Red Sox fandom in Eaton, a Chester, Virginia native who went on to play college baseball at Virginia Military Institute.
“I never had a team and I looked at all that stuff and I was like, ‘Dang, if I want to be like him and play like him, I guess I’ve got to be a Red Sox fan.’ And that’s the moment I became a Red Sox fan,” Eaton said.
Twenty years later, Eaton found himself starting in right field for the Red Sox in Games 1 and 2 of the 2025 American League Wild Card series against New York at Yankee Stadium. He went 2-for-5 with a double and walk in the series.
Eaton played an important role down the stretch in the regular season for the 2025 Red Sox. He went 24-for-81 (.296 batting average) with a .348 on-base percentage in 41 games. The speedster also had nine stolen bases.
He’s here at big league camp competing for a spot on the Red Sox’ Opening Day roster. He has one minor league option remaining and so the Sox have the flexibility to option him to Triple-A Worcester without the risk of losing him to another club.
This past offseason, both manager Alex Cora and chief baseball officer Craig Breslow mentioned Eaton, a right-handed hitter, as a candidate to take over Rob Refsnyder’s role. Refsnyder, who crushed left-handed pitchers, signed a one-year, $6.25 million contract with the Mariners on Dec. 22, which was Eaton’s 29th birthday.
“I just know coming into camp that I’ve got to do everything I can to make an impression and work on the things I need to work on to carry whatever role they want me to have,” he said.
Eaton said he was “a J.D. Drew guy” growing up.
“I loved his swing. It’s a sweet swing. And I just loved everything about the Red Sox.”
The Royals selected Eaton in the 21st round (632nd overall) in 2018, and he received a signing bonus less than six figures. He had to grind to prove himself and make it to the major leagues.
“I would honestly tell you I didn’t think I would be in professional baseball until after I hung up the phone when I got drafted,” Eaton said.
The Royals called him while he was doing something that seemed important before the call.
“I was in the middle of a summer school class, in the middle of an exam,” Eaton said. “And got the phone call and then honestly didn’t know the proper way to go about it. But I knew I was leaving school, so I had left the exam without finishing it.
“School was two hours away from home, and so I went back, grabbed all my stuff and drove home,” Eaton added. “Obviously, my parents already knew. And by the time I got home, all my friends and family were over there. And we all just hung out and had fun. And then the next morning, I was on a flight to Arizona.”
The Royals’ spring training and development complex is in Surprise, Arizona.
The toughness he used to make it through the minors came in part because of his brief background as a wrestler, a sport he did until about the eighth grade.
“Because wrestling is so tough like mentally, practice-wise,” Eaton said. “One of the dads on the team, he turned his garage into like a training (space), and we’d go over there and all those kids were way better than me. And I would basically go there, I was getting my — I don’t know how to word it … but I was getting beat.”
Eaton is versatile. He started at all three outfield positions and third base for 2025 Red Sox. His speed makes him even more of a valuable utility player.
“Definitely worked on it throughout my childhood,” Eaton said. “I did a lot of track and cross country, and it’s just always been kind of one of my tools. And I’ve always had to play the game that way and rely on that a lot. And it’s obviously helped me a lot throughout my career to get me places. And so it’s something I don’t take lightly.”
He participated in track and cross country during middle school. He said he would do anything the coach asked, including the two-mile race, the 4X100 and the 4X400 relay.
“Once high school started, it was pretty much baseball and volleyball,” he said.
Volleyball?
“I love volleyball. It’s a blast,” he said.
Some of his baseball teammates asked him to join them when they didn’t have enough players while playing for fun at a neighborhood pool.
“A summer pool that kind of everyone in the area went to,” Eaton said. “There was a bunch of volleyball courts there, all sand. And we were playing and that’s just how that happened.”
That motivated Eaton to play volleyball as a freshman in high school. But he focused just on baseball after his freshman year.
“It was always the sport that I was the best at,” he said about baseball. “And it’s the sport I loved. All my friendships that I still have now are through that. And that’s what kept me around baseball is all my friends did it. That’s how I hung out, connected with people.”
Eaton is somewhat soft-spoken, at least around the media.
“You unlock him, he can be a little bit of a (expletive) head,” teammate Nick Sogard joked. “He’s fun to mess around with. Yeah, he’s been one of my good guys. You’ve got to unlock it, you’ve got to earn.”
Sogard got to know Eaton well when he arrived at spring training early in 2025. Eaton was already there and they began training together before camp officially started.
“He’s been one of my good buddies since then,” Sogard said. “I enjoy playing with him. You can see how hard he plays. He’s a good guy to have on your team. … He’s a fun guy to be around.”
Eaton made his major league debut with the Royals in 2022 and appeared in 44 major league games that season. He appeared in 28 games for Kansas City in 2023, then spent the entire 2024 season with the Royals’ Triple-A affiliate, Omaha.
He elected free agency after the 2024 season and signed a minor league contract with the Red Sox on Nov. 26, 2024.
Eaton spent the first two and a half months of the 2025 season playing for Triple-A Worcester before spending two stints with Boston in June and July. The Sox again recalled him Aug. 18 and he spent the rest of the season with Boston, batting .316 (18-for-57) with a .371 on-base percentage in 27 games during that stint.
“Once I got called back up, I was starting to play and start a lot more games,” Eaton said. “So that helped me get comfortable and feel good going into the playoffs, and I just took those games as any other game and tried to win.”
When asked about the intense postseason atmosphere at Yankee Stadium, he simply replied, “It was a good experience. I’ll leave it at that.”
He reflected some on his 2025 season when he returned home for the offseason.
“You definitely think about it,” he said. “But obviously, once the offseason starts, it’s in the past and you kind of have to start … moving forward and thinking about the next season. You can always look back on it and feel good about yourself. But it’s what you carry on throughout the offseason that matters.”
He worked on hitting the ball harder this offseason.
“And to put myself in a better position to do that,” Eaton said. “So a lot of that is in the weight room, and that correlates to the swing.”
Eaton hit well against both lefties and righties in his time with Boston last year.
“I feel good against righties and lefties,” Eaton said. “Obviously faced a lot more lefties last year when I was up, but that was the position I was in, and I took it in stride and did what I could.”
