I wonder if the Sox are using a "fail fast" approach with respect to some of their top hitting prospects. This is a common notion among entrepreneurs who would rather "fail fast," meaning that it is better to find out quickly if your idea is going to work. If it doesn't work, you can move on to something else before putting in too much time, energy, and money.
When you look back at Sox top hitting prospects in the KW era, many were not rushed. Yet, they often arrived in the majors with pretty important flaws in their swings or approaches. These flaws were never corrected in the minors because inferior minor league talent could not exploit their flaws.
Guys like Mitchell and Hawkins have both been described as stubborn and have both been aggressively pushed through the system. It seems to me that the Sox may be trying to get them to fail, so they can learn how to adapt and adjust from the failure. Hopefully they can fix fatal flaws in their hitting before they get to the majors.
In contrast to the KW era, when prospects needed to have gaudy minor league numbers to build their value in trades for veterans, Hahn is trying to build from within. To do so, he needs to promote guys to the major league team with some reasonable hope at succeeding. Thus, the top guys are pushed to see if they can handle the challenge so the Sox know early who might make it and who probably won't.