Red Sox Make Expensive Bet On Roman Anthony Becoming One Of MLB’s Best

Before you even take the Boston Red Sox 2025 strong team performance into account, that has them sitting comfortably in wild card position in the American League, it’s been an incredibly eventful season in Beantown. Franchise icon Rafael Devers – gone, to the San Francisco Giants in exchange for little more than salary relief, in terms of how it affects the present major league unit. Large sums of money have been committed to not one, but two youngsters in Kristian Campbell and Roman Anthony, with the former already dispatched to Triple-A due to significant struggles against major league pitching. When you think about it, it is kind of amazing that the club is sitting as pretty as it is despite the turmoil.

Anthony, 21, has been a big part of the excitement since his arrival in the majors earlier this season. The club’s 2nd round pick in the 2022 draft, Anthony was a dominant performer throughout his minor league tenure. Each season I prepare a list of top minor league position player prospects based on performance relative to league and level, adjusted for age. It’s purely statistically based, and has no adjustments for position or ball park. I always recommend that the rankings be taken with a grain of salt, and use them as more of a master follow list, a starting point from which other, more traditional evaluation methods can be used.

Anthony ranked #8 and #5 on my 2023 and 2024 year-end rankings, and #17 on my 2025 midseason list. That’s pretty heady stuff. I’ve been doing these rankings since 1993, and it’s very rare for a player to average a Top Ten ranking per minor league season. It’s actually a pretty good bellwether for future MLB excellence. And it better be, for the Red Sox sake, as they have locked up Anthony for eight years, with $130 million in guaranteed money. His deals peaks in 2033, when he is guaranteed $29.625 million.

This is a whole different animal than the contracts signed by Campbell (eight years, $60 million guaranteed, peak salary of $16.25 million in 2032) and even Brewer standout Jackson Chourio (eight years, $82 million, peak salary of $17.25 million in 2031). Sure, the MLB salary structure stands to change quite a bit by the early 2030s, but guaranteeing nearly $30 million a season to a player with barely any MLB experience is quite a leap of faith.

Let’s evaluate Anthony both objectively – using batted ball data from his limited MLB experience – and subjectively, comparing him to the list of players who exhibited similar levels of minor league excellence.

Anthony started his MLB career 2 of 27, and has since hit .308-.429-.467, with an overall line of .276-.398-.434 with a 134 wRC+ through Sunday’s games. The lefthanded hitter has a pretty minimal platoon split at this early stage in his MLB career. That’s a very good sign, as that has been a weeding-out factor for many top lefty bat prospects in the past.

His K/BB profile is pretty decent for a 21-year-old. His 25.8% K rate is over a half standard deviation higher than league average, but that’s acceptable given his excellent 14.8% BB rate, which is over two standard deviations higher than league average.

Anthony crushes the baseball – his 94.5 mph average exit speed is over two standard deviations higher than league average, and his 98.1 mph average fly ball exit speed is also over two standard deviations higher. He hits his liners (98.7 mph average) and grounders (91.5 mph) hard as well – almost two standard deviations higher than league average on both counts. He does slightly exceed my threshold for extreme ground ball pulling, but given all of the other positives I’m not sweating it. This could act as a drag on his batting average if not addressed.

His batted ball frequency profile evokes a young, Marlin version of Christian Yelich. His 5.7 degree average launch angle is almost two standard deviations lower than league average. His 28.9% fly ball rate is over a standard deviation lower, and his 52.6% grounder rate over a standard deviation higher than league average. His 0.7% pop up rate is almost nonexistent. I don’t look at this as a bug – I look at as a feature, an opportunity. Once the fly balls come, and they will, watch out.

All of that said, Anthony has been a bit fortunate thus far in his MLB career – he “should be” hitting .242-.357-.410, with a 117 “Tru” Production+ that lags his wRC+ by a bit. The Yelich comp is a solid one here – with Anthony possessing a lower floor but a higher ceiling than the former MVP that is still going strong in his mid-thirties.

About those players who had similar rankings on my minor league lists……here are the guys who averaged a Top Ten ranking over three minor league seasons:

– James Wood (actually ranked 10.3, but I bent the rules to let him in)

– Yordan Alvarez

– Eloy Jimenez

– Carlos Correa

– Freddie Freeman

– Giancarlo Stanton

– Jay Bruce

– Billy Butler

– Adrian Beltre

And here’s some guys who averaged a Top Ten ranking but blew through the minors in two seasons:

– Jackson Holliday

– Wander Franco

– Vladimir Guerrero, Jr.

– Ronald Acuna

– Kyle Schwarber

– Mookie Betts

– Miles Head

– Mike Trout

– Jason Heyward

– Evan Longoria

– Pat Burrell

– Andruw Jones

– Vladimir Guerrero

– Alex Rodriguez (#1 in both 1994 and 1995)

Pretty impressive group. You might be wondering who exactly is Miles Head? He was an unathletic, bat-only Athletics’ prospect who ranked #12 in 2011 and #7 in 2012. Nice to see Vladdy father and son both in this exclusive club.

Looking at the former group, the one to which Anthony belongs, it gives you some idea as to both the upside and the risk of Anthony’s contract. Locking up the first eight seasons of Adrian Beltre/Freddie Freeman/Carlos Delgado/Giancarlo Stanton’s contract with an Anthony-esque deal would be a clear winner for the Bosox. But even, Alvarez and Correa have had blips that give some cause for concern. Jay Bruce is an interesting one – he was a power-before-hit guy, like Anthony might be if things don’t go optimally, and started to run out of steam right about the time he would be guaranteed the biggest money in Anthony’s deal. Butler was an unathletic, bat-only guy – I don’t see Anthony as a legit comp. Eloy Jimenez is a scary name – like Anthony and Yelich, he was a low launch-angle guy – but his lack of complementary skills and poor plate discipline explain his poor development.

Normally, I love these early “lock him up” deals from the team perspective, but the calculus has begun to change. “Great player/prospect at affordable dollars” contracts, like the Braves’ Acuna/Albies deals are becoming rarer. The players signing them are either getting less great or getting more dollars, or both. Anthony is a really good player/prospect getting big dollars. (Campbell isn’t as great, and is getting way less money, and Chourio is great, and getting way less money.) As a Red Sox fan, I’d be happy – Anthony is a really good player/prospect, and will be on the home team for a good long while, in part thanks to the departure of Devers. The Sox invested their savings promptly in a homegrown stud.

But the risk here must be acknowledged – even the best prospects aren’t sure things, and as good as Anthony is, there been have prospects of his caliber that have fallen short of expectations. And the money is real – if Anthony develops a la Yelich, no one is complaining. If it’s more of a Jay Bruce arc, I guess that’s OK, too. But Jackson Holliday was arguably even more highly regarded as a minor leaguer than Anthony – how would you feel about a future $30 million salary commitment in the early 2030s if you were an Oriole fan, even with his 2025 improvement? The cost of an unlikely Anthony washout would not be nominal, as it would have been for most of the other young players signing so early in their respective careers.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tonyblengino/2025/08/19/red-sox-make-expensive-bet-on-roman-anthony-becoming-one-of-mlbs-best/