The Boston Red Sox on Thursday fell to the Seattle Mariners with a sluggish offensive performance, scoring just three times to lose by a single run. While the team is scoring an average of 4.59 runs per game, good enough for 10th in MLB, they have had five games in which they scored in double digits.
Taking away the 68 runs scored in those five games, the Red Sox have averaged a sorry 2.55 runs in their other 22 contests.
Their franchise player, Rafael Devers, in the second season of his 10-year, $313.5 million contract is leading the American League with 34 strikeouts, but has only two home runs on the season and just 19 hits in 94 official at bats.
But one of the Red Sox’s most productive bats is not even on the major league roster, and even the team’s president, Sam Kennedy, is impatient to see the organization’s top prospect, Roman Anthony, at Fenway Park.
“We just keep walking by Bres’ office saying, ‘Come on, man. What are we waiting for? Let’s go!'” Kennedy said in an interview on Boston radio station WEEI on Thursday. (“Bres” refers to Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow.)
As if to make the point even more powerfully, on the same day that the Red Sox were dropping a 4-3 decision to the Mariners tallying only four hits, Anthony belted his fifth home run of the season for the Triple-A Worcester Red Sox.
The WooSox, as the team is called by their fans, defeated the Syracuse Mets 14-1 to raise their record to 14-9. Anthony reached base four times in that game, with three hits including his home run and a walk. Anthony raised his OPS for the season to 1.034, leading all International League hitters with at least 70 at-bats.
So when will Anthony finally make his Boston debut? According to MLB.com Red Sox beat writer Ian Browne, Red Sox fans — and the team’s president — will have to be patient at least until until June.
“This guy is the best hitting prospect the Red Sox have had in years,” Browne said in an online video. “Personally, I think late June is around the right time to go with Anthony. That will give him three full months at Triple-A.”
As Browne also noted, the Red Sox will need to decide how to fit the 20-year-old Anthony, MLB Pipeline’s No. 2 overall prospect (effectively No. 1 with Dodgers pitcher Roki Sasaki already in the major leagues), into the lineup. Primarily a corner outfielder, to accommodate him the Red Sox would need to either trade or bench one of Jarren Duran, Ceddanne Rafaela or Wilyer Abreu.
The most likely scenario appears to be a move to center by the speedy Duran, inserting Anthony in left — and saying goodbye to Rafaela in a trade.
