‘Crazy’ Red Sox coach’s call-up to majors included 2.4K-mile detour to get passport

KANSAS CITY — When Pablo Cabrera saw Red Sox assistant GM Eddie Romero’s incoming call, he initially thought it was about a project they were working on with the player development department.

“We need you to go coach first base in the big leagues in Toronto,” Romero instead told Cabrera.

Just like that, the 28-year-old Cabrera went from being the Red Sox’ minor league infield/outfield defensive coordinator — six years removed from coaching high school ball — to a member of the big league coaching staff. He’s Boston’s interim first base coach and outfield instructor.

“It was a crazy 24 hours,” Cabrera said earlier this week when the Red Sox played the Royals at Kauffman Stadium.

Cabrera was in Portland, Maine, working with the Double-A Sea Dogs. He knew the Red Sox needed to replace several coaching positions after Boston fired manager Alex Cora and five other coaches on April 25 due to a disappointing 10-17 start. But it never crossed Cabrera’s mind that he would be asked.

Romero called Cabrera in the afternoon on Sunday, April 26. Boston was finishing its three-game series in Baltimore that day with interim manager Chad Tracy at the helm for the first time.

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Romero asked Cabrera to meet the Sox in Toronto the next day, Monday, April 27, when the Blue Jays and Red Sox opened a three-game series at Rogers Centre.

“I need to get my passport,” Cabrera told Romero.

As a roving instructor, Cabrera travels to work with all of Boston’s minor league affiliates during the season. But he’s stationed in Fort Myers at the JetBlue Park complex. His passport was back at home there.

“So I need to go back down to Fort Myers and grab that. But, yeah, it was crazy,” Cabrera said. “First person I called was actually my girlfriend because we were on the trip together, and it was like, ‘Hey, some things have changed.’”

Cabrera drove from Portland to Boston, took the 1,249-mile flight to Fort Myers on Sunday evening, then flew another 1,187 miles to Canada on Monday morning.

“When I was driving to Boston that’s when I called the family, called my parents and let them know what was going on and where I was going,” Cabrera said.

Both his mother and father were together when he called his mom’s phone. So Cabrera asked his mom to put the phone on speaker so his dad could listen in.

“They freaked out,” Cabrera said.

His parents were rightfully ecstatic, seeing their son go from coaching high school baseball to the big leagues in the span of six years.

Cabrera played baseball at Florida Southern College from 2016-19, recording 203 hits and a .389 on-base percentage.

After graduating with a degree in business administration, he worked as a sales consultant at Cloudpoint Hospitality Solutions.

“When COVID hit, I was in sales and realized that the part-time job that I was doing was what I enjoyed the most — and it was coaching,” Cabrera said.

Cabrera’s part-time gig was as a high school hitting coach at West Orange High in Winter Garden, Florida.

“With COVID happening, everything like that, just kind of rethinking what my career path was,” he said. “I enjoyed coaching.”

He enrolled at the University of Charleston in West Virginia, to earn his master’s degree in strategic leadership while coaching baseball there.

“I decided it’d be a good opportunity to go somewhere and coach and also keep studying and keep learning,” Cabrera said. “Charleston had a graduate assistant program that allowed me to go there, get my master’s and also be a part of the baseball team and help them and coach their infielders and hitters.”

He served as Charleston’s defensive coordinator in his first season there, then offensive coordinator in his second season. He graduated in 2022, and the connections he made there led to him joining the Red Sox organization.

Then-Red Sox minor league field coordinator Andrew Wright, who now works in the Washington Nationals organization, hired Cabrera in early 2023.

Wright served as the head coach at Charleston from 2016-19. Wright and Cabrera never crossed paths at the college. But Ryan Hunt, a former Charleston graduate assistant who now works in the Yankees organization, connected the two.

“Ryan Hunt put a good word out for me, and that’s how the connection got made with where I was at and with the Red Sox,” Cabrera said.

A strategic leadership degree helps students learn to lead organizations and predict how companies need to adapt.

“It prepared me really well for just understanding how organizations work and how people interact and how those interactions happen,” Cabrera said. “But it was two years of it and it was two years of really a lot of learning.”

Chief baseball officer Craig Breslow selected Cabrera for the big league coaching staff in part because of how well he interacts with others.

“In a short amount of time, he’s really impressed many of us in the organization with kind of the technical and tactical skills and also ability to build relationships,” Breslow said about Cabrera on April 27. “The fact that he’s bilingual is certainly helpful. ... We’re really excited about bringing him on board.”

Cabrera was on the last leg of his first roving trip of the season when he got the call to the big leagues.

“The week before I was in Salem, and then I was in Greenville, and then I was in Worcester that week,” he said. “And then Portland was going to be the last leg of the trip for me. And on the last day was the day that ultimately got the call.”

Cabrera had previous experience coaching first base. His initial job with the Red Sox was on Portland’s coaching staff. He spent the 2023 season with the Sea Dogs and gained experience coaching first base there. He then became the Florida Complex League Red Sox’ defensive coach where he also coached first base.

He said the quick transition to the majors has been crazy but “a lot of fun.” He had preexisting relationships with interim manager Chad Tracy, interim third base coach Chad Epperson and bench coach José Flores.

“Those are all guys that I’ve had relationships in the past and worked closely with before,” he said. “So that transition has been really easy. And a lot of the players I had in Portland. So like my first game in Toronto, Marcelo Mayer is the first guy that gets first base, and I coached him my first year in Portland.”

Cabrera is enjoying Boston. His parents plan to visit him for his birthday in late June when the Yankees are in town.

He has been “living out of a suitcase” but that’s about to change.

“Actually the plan when I get back to Boston (from Kansas City) — my girlfriend’s coming up from Fort Myers, and we’re meeting up at an apartment that we got put up in there, so walking distance from the stadium,” he said. “So excited to have a little bit of stability when it comes to when you’re at home. So that will be good.”

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