The Boston Red Sox have been struck hard by injuries this season, forcing the club to promote from the minor leagues and sparking another Rafael Devers controversy. The club is now coming under a bit of criticism from inside the league.
A longtime American League talent evaluator told Chris Cotillo of MassLive.com that the club not promoting top prospect Roman Anthony ‘makes zero sense’ amid the team’s disappointing start.
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- Roman Anthony stats (MiLB): .309/.441/.514, .955 OPS, 8 home runs, 9 doubles, 23 RBI, 40 runs scored
Anthony, rated as the No. 1 prospect in baseball by MLB.com, is thriving with Triple-A Worcester. Across 181 at-bats this season, he sports a .955 OPS with his highest batting average since he played in Rookie ball. However, Boston has been public about its desire to keep him down in the minor leagues.
Jeff Passan of ESPN.com spoke to Red Sox chief baseball officer about the decision not to promote Anthony yet. He emphasized the young hitter’s development without giving any timeline for an MLB debut.
“It’s really difficult to predict that someone is going to be successful out of the gate. You’re making these long-term, probabilistic bets that guys who perform the way Kristian and Marcelo and Roman have tend to be productive big leaguers. But does that happen in Week 1, Month 1, Season 1? You don’t know. You try to round out their development as well as possible. It’s really important that communication between our major league staff and player-development group is seamless so we know exactly what their training, game-planning and routines look like so we can control as many of those variables as possible knowing what we can’t control.”
Boston Red Sox CBO Craig Breslow on keepign Roman Anthonyin the minor leagues (via ESPN)
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Boston had an easy justification to keep Anthony down in the minor leagues early in the season. The 21-year-old got off to a poor start, posting a .167 batting average with a 32.5 percent strikeout rate in his first 30 at-bats. He made adjustments and has arguably been the best hitter in the minors since.
From April 10 to May 28, Anthony posted a .349/.467/.548 triple-slash line with a 1.015 OPS, a 1733 wRC+ and a higher walk rate (18.7 percent) than strikeout rate (17.6 percent) in 146 at-bats. In addition, he’s recorded a 1.025 OPS versus southpaws and has a .923 OPS against right-handed pitchers.
The Red Sox could also argue that there’s nowhere for Anthony to play right now on the big-league club. However, Boston. could shift Ceddanne Rafaela to second base, with Kristian Campbell moving to first base, opening a spot in the outfield for Anthony. For now, though, that doesn’t seem to be on the table for a team that entered MLB games today with a 27-31 record, far below expectations entering the season.