Roman Anthony promoted: Red Sox call up baseball’s best prospect for long-awaited MLB debut

The Boston Red Sox have promoted outfielder Roman Anthony to the majors, the team announced Monday. Anthony is in the starting lineup against the Rays, batting fifth and playing right field, as Wilyer Abreu lands on the injured list with an oblique strain.

Anthony, 21, entered the spring ranked by CBS Sports as the No. 1 prospect in the minors. He’s done nothing to change that status. In his first 58 Triple-A games this year, he hit .288/.423/.491 with 10 home runs, three stolen bases, and nearly as many walks as strikeouts (51 versus 56).

We recently covered Anthony’s season to date and attempted to divine what, precisely, would have to change for him to receive the call:

Anthony, my preseason No. 1, continues to bully Triple-A pitchers. Coming into Wednesday, he has hit .321/.453/.518 with seven home runs, 10 additional extra-base hits, and nearly as many walks as strikeouts — all that despite being extremely young (by more than five years) for Triple-A. His average exit velocity against right-handed pitching so far, and I want to stress that I do mean average, is over 97 mph. 

Why isn’t Anthony up? The Red Sox continue to resist the urge to play Anthony at first base, leaving him without a clean entry point to the big-league roster. Rafael Devers is entrenched as the designated hitter, and both Jarren Duran and Wilyer Abreu have done their parts in the corners. That leaves center field as the realistic pathway, but even then, Boston may reason that Ceddanne Rafaela’s elite defense is worth tolerating his bat. I do think that, at some indeterminable point, the Red Sox will have to make a more efficient use of their personnel by putting Anthony or Abreu at the cold corner. If and/or when they reach that conclusion is anyone’s guess, yet I’m including Anthony anyway because he’s a violent sneeze away from The Show.

Abreu, 25, hit .245/.321/.471 (118 OPS+) with 13 home runs and four stolen bases in 64 games before his injury. His contributions had been worth 1.7 Wins Above Replacement, according to Baseball Reference’s calculations. The Red Sox offered no timetable on Abreu, but it’s worth noting that Baseball Prospectus’ database suggests oblique strains tend to cost players five weeks on average. That doesn’t mean Abreu will be sidelined for that long, of course, as every injury is unique in their own way.

The Red Sox entered Monday’s contest against the Tampa Bay Rays with a 32-35 record on the season.