You don’t need me to tell you Roman Anthony is good. From the moment Roki Sasaki exhausted his rookie eligibility, Anthony has been the consensus top prospect in baseball (and probably should have been before then, to be honest).
So now that he’s been called up, officially joining the Red Sox on Monday, what am I going to tell you to do? Pick him up? He’s already rostered in 82 percent of CBS Sports leagues. We’ve been counting down to this day for months now.
Clearly, he hasn’t done anything to diminish his stock in 2025. This stat line paints a nice enough picture:
But it doesn’t tell the whole story. Anthony’s 95.0 mph average exit velocity at Triple-A would rank fourth among all major-leaguers — behind the big three of Oneil Cruz, Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge — and it’s not just for show either. Anthony’s promotion comes a mere two days after he hit a 497-foot grand slam. Only four major-league home runs have traveled farther than that during the entire Statcast era. Watch as it sails out of the ballpark:
Now, you may be wondering why his numbers don’t look even better if his power is truly in a different stratosphere. Well, yeah. That was the Red Sox’s excuse in delaying his arrival. Here’s how The Boston Globe put it less than two weeks ago:
“The Sox want Anthony to improve against non-fastballs in the zone (entering Tuesday, he was hitting .229 and slugging .286 in May against such pitches). At times, especially early this month, Anthony lets the ball get too deep in the zone, resulting in hard grounders rather than long fly balls that permit his elite power to play.”
In short, Anthony wastes much of his hard contact, and we can see it in the numbers. His 52.2 percent ground-ball rate at Triple-A would be the ninth-highest among qualifying major-league hitters, according to FanGraphs, and his 24.8 percent fly-ball rate would be the third-lowest. Even when he’s putting the ball in the air, it’s not to his pull side as often as anyone would like, and that’s why he’s pacing as more like a 25-homer guy at Triple-A than a 40-homer guy.
But is that the reason why the Red Sox hadn’t already called him up? Doubtful. It was a justification, a place where they saw room for improvement, but that improvement could and often does come at the major-league level. As good as Anthony is at getting on base, reaching at a .423 clip at Triple-A this year, they don’t necessarily need him to be a home run king right away. More likely, the real reason they hadn’t called him up already is because they didn’t have a spot for him.
What else could it be? They didn’t hesitate to promote Kristian Campbell or Marcelo Mayer when the opportunity presented itself. They tried to shift Rafael Devers to first base to make room for Anthony, raising his ire in the process. Between Devers occupying the DH spot and Jarren Duran, Wilyer Abreu and Ceddanne Rafaela all making positive contributions in the outfield, there was simply no place to play Anthony. Only when Abreu hit the IL with a side injury did that change.
So what about when Abreu returns? It’s worth bringing up because his absence doesn’t figure to be that long. In fact, the Red Sox initially thought he could avoid the IL entirely. There’s certainly a scenario in which Anthony hits the ground running, immediately becoming an integral part of the Red Sox lineup and a world-beater in Fantasy. But we haven’t seen that scenario play out for many of the highest-end hitter call-ups in recent years. Jackson Chourio and Jackson Merrill needed a couple months to find their footing last year. Wyatt Langford needed more like five.
And consider the closest corollaries this year. Nick Kurtz had just two extra-base hits through his first 16 games, striking out at a near-40 percent clip. Jac Caglianone started out 2 for 21 before his four-hit game Sunday. I advised sticking with both through their struggles, which weren’t very long in the grand scheme of things, and I’d advise doing the same with Anthony if he encounters similar struggles, whether because of his ground-ball rate or just the shock of facing big-league pitching for the first time. But I’m not sure he’ll get the same runway as those other two. If Abreu’s absence ends up being on the shorter side and Anthony doesn’t hit the ground running, well, then we’re right back to square one. The Red Sox won’t have a spot for him.
The bottom line is that I think Anthony has more pressure to perform than either Kurtz or Caglianone did, and while he’s a better prospect than those two, he’s not an order of magnitude better. Basically, he’ll need to perform well enough to convince the Red Sox to do one of five things:
- Transition Kristian Campbell to first base, allowing Ceddanne Rafael to shift to second
- Ditch Trevor Story, allowing Rafaela to shift to shortstop
- Relegate Rafaela to a super utility role, thereby forfeiting his stellar defense in center field (as is true in Scenarios 1 and 2)
- Try again to convince Rafael Devers to move to first base, freeing up the DH spot
- Make Anthony part of a four-man outfield rotation with Rafaela, Abreu and Jarren Duran
Other the Devers agreeing to move to first, the least likely of those scenarios, there is no optimal one.
Maybe you don’t want to hear that today. If so, then allow me to refer you back to the first sentence of this article: You don’t need me to tell you Anthony is good. His goodness is plainly evident. I spent a few graphs remarking on it anyway, just to capture the enthusiasm of the moment, but you knew most of it already, I’m sure. That’s how little you need me to tell you he’s good.
But rather than rocket him up my rankings in deference to his Bryce Harper-caliber upside, I’m going to safeguard against the downside risk and slot him 38th among outfielders to start out. That’s ahead of Brenton Doyle and Tommy Edman, but behind Ian Happ and Heliot Ramos.
This news was originally published on this post .
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