Marcelo Mayer thought he could play through the pain. After hurting his shoulder in May he kept taking the field, striving to continue his march through the minors in hopes of earning another promotion and taking another step towards realizing his big league dream.

But as his performance and health suffered, the top Red Sox prospect was eventually forced to admit he was making a mistake.

“I think a lot of that is on me, not really knowing my body and not knowing how to handle a full season or really communicate with my trainers,” Mayer said. “But looking forward now, that’s in the past, my shoulder is in a great spot.”

After what has proven to be a lengthy recovery process, the 21-year-old shortstop is nearly back to full health and is expected to be full-go by spring training. Mayer said he’s been hitting off a tee and will soon start facing live pitching, and Red Sox director of player development Brian Abraham said he has no restrictions as he completes his ramp-up.

“It’s obviously been a long and arduous road for him, and some ups and downs for sure, but we’re excited for him to come to spring training fully healthy and be ready to compete this year,” Abraham said.

Though Mayer was held out of Trevor Story’s recent infielder’s camp in Dallas, he and Boston’s other top young prospects have been in Boston this week for the organization’s annual Rookie Development Program. The weeklong program aims to help prepare rookies for life in the big leagues, and in addition to drills and workouts, the rookies also heard a talk from Boston Celtics president Brad Stevens and will take part in this weekend’s Winter Weekend festivities in Springfield.

The week in Boston has also been a great bonding opportunity, bringing together some of the club’s more established prospects like Mayer, outfielder Roman Anthony and catcher Kyle Teel as well as some of the more recent additions, like pitchers Justin Slaten, Richard Fitts and Isaiah Campbell, all of whom were acquired this offseason in trades.

“We’ve developed a great close bond with each other,” said Anthony, who has quickly risen through the ranks since being selected in the second round of the 2022 MLB Draft. “We all get dinners together, whether it’s during the year, during spring training, whatever it is, we’re always hanging out and I think that’s why this group is so close and tight knit.”

The Red Sox hope the seeds planted over weeks like this could blossom into a future championship contender, and top club decision-makers haven’t been shy about saying so. Earlier this week chief baseball officer Craig Breslow said he views the development of Mayer, Anthony and Teel into impact big leaguers as the club’s fastest path to a championship, a candid admission that they — not a hypothetical big-money free agent acquisition — will be the ones to determine the club’s long-term fate.

No pressure, right? Whatever the expectations, the prospects say they’re committed to reaching their full potential, and while the recognition they’ve received is nice, they don’t plan on letting it get to their heads.

“It’s definitely exciting, it’s an honor to be talked about like that, but at the end of the day we haven’t done anything,” Mayer said. “In order for that to become a reality we all know we have to work extremely hard and work together and try to get better every single day.”

“You have to take that as a positive, but we’re not there yet,” Anthony said, echoing Mayer’s response. “We’ve got a lot of work to do and a long ways to go before we’re there.”