Boston Red Sox Top 45 Prospects

In high school, Anthony presented clubs with a risky but exciting combination of present raw power and long-term power projection, but he made a below-average rate of contact on the showcase circuit (71%) and, at his size, seemed likely to end up at a corner position on defense. It’s part of why he was in essence a late-first round pick (he went 79th overall, but his $2.5 million bonus was in line with the 30th overall pick) rather than an obvious top prospect.

Anthony’s swing has become looser as well as more active and kinetic, as his hands build enormous momentum before they explode and break the sound barrier with some of the best bat speed in pro baseball. The whip and looseness of his hips and hands at his size is very special. These changes not only unlocked a new gear of raw power for Anthony, who is a career .285/.402/.477 hitter in the minors as of his June 2025 call-up, but they also seem to have made him more comfortable and adept at moving the barrel around the zone. He posted a 75% contact rate in 2024 as he dominated Double- and Triple-A at age 20. The adjustments have also made Anthony more adept at covering fastballs running up and away from him. He was often swinging underneath these pitches completely in high school and upon his entry into pro ball, and he’s still frequently late on fastballs, but he’s strong enough to do huge damage to the opposite field. The tweaks to his swing have perhaps caused him to concede some of his ability to scoop low pitches. Anthony’s cut often has a downward path, which is part of why his average launch angles have been in the 5-8 degree range throughout his career.

Anthony’s strikeout rates have hovered in the 23-25% range the last couple of seasons (a little south of the big league average) in part because he’s a very patient (bordering on passive) hitter who runs a ton of deep counts. His 39% swing rate from 2024 would have been the fourth-lowest in the majors last year, and it’s down to 35% as of the time of his call-up. Though his swing isn’t totally optimized to get to all of his raw power in games right now, Anthony has such ridiculous juice that he’s going to hit for power anyway. Like Jarren Duran before him, Anthony’s feel for actualizing that power in big league games will probably take a little bit of time to reach its apex, but at peak, he’ll be a middle-of-the-order monster posting huge power and on-base percentages.

As Anthony has filled out and become more physical, he has slowed down enough to shift his defensive projection to an outfield corner, and he’s mostly played left field in 2025. In a vacuum he might be a better fit in right, though where he plays on any given day will likely depend on which other Red Sox outfielders are healthy. He’s a better defender than Duran, but not Wilyer Abreu or Ceddanne Rafaela. He should be a plus defender in a corner thanks to his straight line speed. Though not quite on the Acuña/Tatis/Ohtani level of prospect, Anthony is going to be a power-hitting cornerstone of the franchise for the next six-plus years.

Campbell looked incredible during spring training and became the recipient of a $60 million extension before he had ever played a big league game. He hasn’t exactly hit the ground running during the regular season, and I’ll get into what specifically is different about his output now compared to his breakout 2024 in a second, but let’s not forget the context of Campbell’s debut. This is only his third year of high-level baseball. He was a draft-eligible redshirt freshman in 2023, an outstanding slash-and-dash leadoff man who was among the most difficult Division-I hitters to make swing and miss during that season. He hit .376/.484/.549 and struck out just 17 times in 217 PA. In a year, the Red Sox essentially made him into a Jarren Duran sequel, taking another speedy, contact-oriented, poor-gloved second baseman and making subtle changes to his swing and approach, resulting in a seismic shift to his offensive output, which now includes power. Campbell posted a .997 OPS in his first full pro season and raced from High- to Triple-A by the end of the year.

Campbell is now swinging with damage-seeking intent and seemed able to lift the ball more (three degrees of launch in 2023, nine degrees in 2024) than in college. The power he’s generating with his new style is shocking. He’s swinging with huge effort, and his high-end exit velocities are now comfortably plus on the big league scale (he hit a ball 114 mph last year). These changes have come at the expense of some of Campbell’s ability to make contact (he had a 90% contact rate in college, 81% in pro ball 2023, and 78% in 2024), but not so much that he’s totally out of control and at risk of not hitting. His cut still looks weird, like it did in college, when he was often chopping down at the baseball, except now it’s with whole-body effort.

During Campbell’s big league tenure so far, he has struggled to pull the ball in the air as often as he was last season, especially fastballs, though he has the bat speed to drive them the opposite way with power. He’s begun lunging at more secondary pitches, too, seemingly because he’s cheating to catch up to fastballs. His spray chart has shifted way toward right field compared to 2024. I, like most everyone, entered 2025 convinced that this weirdo swing would work for Campbell even though it’s unconventional. Though he was demoted shortly before publication, I still think it will. Again, two years ago this guy was playing in his lone college baseball season and now he’s facing the best pitchers in the world. He deserves time to adjust and hopefully get stronger so it doesn’t take his entire body winding up for him to swing hard. Also remember the Duran comparison, and how long it took him to adjust and tweak things before he became an extra-base machine. It might take some time, but Campbell still projects as an impact offensive player.

The defense piece of this is less settled, because Campbell is a bad second baseman who might not be an infielder at all. He is at his most comfortable when he is moving from right to left while making the play, which you do less of at second base. If Campbell is asked to make throws from any kind of odd platform, his strength and accuracy waiver. His arm accuracy issues might always mean he’s a bit of a sketchy option as an infield defender. Most teams would have just moved him to an outfield corner by now, but the Red Sox are chock full of outfielders and aren’t in great position to do that. They mixed in a lot of center field during the first half of 2024 before that experiment took a back seat to reps at shortstop during the second half. Campbell is a plus runner who has the wheels for center, but his feel for the position (especially coming in on balls in front of him) is raw, though he’s looked pretty good out there in limited 2025 reps. His athleticism bails him out of some bad reads; Campbell can get twisted around out there and still find a crazy way to make the play, which is pretty exciting given the context of his development. Long-term development in center would make sense in a vacuum, but that’s not the reality the Red Sox are living in. The combination of roster need and Campbell’s limitations mean that he’ll take reps at first base as he resets in Worcester. Where Campbell plays at the big league level on any given day could be dictated by where the ball is least likely to be hit based on the matchup; he might continue to rove in the Ben Zobrist mold. He’s going to be a unique impact player, both in terms of his style and roster fit.

For a couple of years now, I’ve written about my apprehension surrounding Mayer’s issues with secondary stuff. Throughout his entire career, he has performed in spite of these issues, but they persist. Marcelo’s front side is so upright throughout his swing that it makes it incredibly difficult for him to dip and scoop soft stuff at the bottom of the strike zone and below. He can absolutely button a fastball, but big league pitchers aren’t going to show him many of those if he keeps performing like he has against secondaries. Just how stark is the contrast? Mayer had an 87% contact rate against fastballs last year and a 57% contact rate against breaking balls. He isn’t chasing secondary stuff quite so often in 2025 and is performing better against breaking balls, but he has a sub-.400 OPS against changeups and splitters. It seemed feasible in 2023 that these issues were the result of him playing through injury, but even as he slashed an amazing .307/.370/.480 at Double-A Portland in 2024, this problem lurked beneath the surface and is an unstable Jenga block in the middle of an otherwise exciting profile.

Mayer is a powerful mistake hitter with all-fields juice when he gets a pitch in the the middle of the strike zone and above; he had a very impressive 50% hard-hit rate in 2024 and tallied 36 extra-base hits in just 77 games, as his season was interrupted for the third straight year by injury. In consecutive years, he has had wrist, shoulder, and back issues, which season Mayer’s profile with another element of risk. Mostly though, he’s going to access enough power to be an impact player and long-term solution at shortstop for the Red Sox.

Mayer has always been a bit boxier than the usual elite shortstop prospect, but in 2025 he looks like he’s in the best shape of his career. His hands and actions are so skilled and polished that he projects as an average defensive shortstop despite some blemishes. His footwork and actions are great, and a natural fit at third base, where he’s played in deference to Trevor Story since debuting. When he has played short in the minors, Red Sox have found a way to mask his mediocre range and arm strength (for a shortstop) with good positioning. It isn’t sexy, but it works. Though Mayer’s performance and my grade for him have seesawed a bit during his time as a prospect (and based on his early performance against big league pitching, you can see why), he has enough power to be considered a productive, power-hitting shortstop despite his likely flaws.

Arias’ 89% contact rate in the 2023 DSL was the best in the system, so he came into 2024 with a lot of profile for a guy who signed for $525,000 the year before. He not only met but exceeded expectations, as he began 2024 in Fort Myers and then hit his way to Salem for the final month of the season. All told, he slashed .309/.409/.487 with a 17.5% strikeout rate. Arias performed so well during the first month of 2025 (he was making an even better rate of contact) that he was again quickly promoted to Greenville, and he’s one of the youngest handful of position player prospects at that level across all of baseball.

Arias has special feel for contact. He tracks pitches with laser-guided precision and moves the barrel all over the zone. His ability to vary the timing of his footwork to match the incoming pitch type is uncanny, the sort of innate ability you see in a potential batting title winner. Though opposing pitchers might be able to limit the damage Arias can do by working toward the bottom of the zone (where he struggles to lift the baseball), he has virtually no holes in his swing that you could foresee being exploited by upper-level pitching. Arias still badly needs to get stronger. He has below-average bat speed right now, but at age 19, it’s entirely plausible he could add a grade or so as he matures. Arias is a little chase prone (who can blame him, he hits everything), but aside from that, he is a very stable offensive prospect. He might even make so much contact that he out-hits his raw power grade in games.

Adding to the excitement here is Arias’ defense. He isn’t especially speedy or rangy, but he does everything else well on defense. His hands and actions are smooth and skilled, and his feel for contorting his body to make accurate throws helps enable him to make lots of tough plays even though he doesn’t cover a lot of ground. This is an everyday shortstop prospect whose ceiling will be dictated by how much power he grows into as he matures.

Fitts spent most of his college career in the bullpen, but like a lot of Yankees draftees, he was moved into the starting rotation as a pro and ascended through the minors with little resistance. Fitts worked a whopping 152.2 innings in 2023, 50 innings more than he did in the prior season, and he not only maintained his velocity throughout the entire year, he experienced a little bit of a bump. He was part of the Alex Verdugo trade and sent to Worcester, where he performed roughly the same as he had the year prior, though the Sox handled his workload more conservatively and made changes to his repertoire. After a month-long cup of coffee at the end of the 2024 season, Fitts broke camp with the big league roster in 2025 and made three starts before he was shut down for nearly six weeks with a right pectoral strain. He returned in late May with the same velo and pitch mix as before, and was recalled shortly before list publication.

Plus fastball command and a hard, two-plane slider give Fitts two whiff-getting weapons. He leaned more on his slider in 2024 and also incorporated a changeup at a roughly 16% clip. He can alter the shape of his breaking ball in a couple of ways; he has a cutter in the 85-89 mph range, a curveball in the low-80s, and a slider with velos that blend in between the two of them. The changeup is good every once in a while, and Fitts’ command helps make it so that even when it lacks movement, it tends to stay out of trouble. He can attack all quadrants of the zone and his velocity has been trending up across the last two years, going from averaging 93 to averaging 95 on either side of his shoulder issue. It has boosted Fitts’ projection from that of a stable backend starter to a big league-ready no. 4 option.

Tolle is an XL southpaw whose fastball had the 2024 draft’s most deceptive secondary traits, enough that he was generating plus-plus miss at TCU even though he was only sitting 91. Now Tolle is pumping 95, and his fastball has been even more dominant against pro hitters in Greenville because of the added velocity, as well as a change in Tolle’s style of attack. The miss rate on his fastball as of this update is nearly twice the big league average, at just north of 40%, and Tolle is more frequently elevating that pitch now than he was in college.

Tolle is enormous, and while it doesn’t look pretty, he’s athletic enough to explode down the mound and generate seven-and-a-half feet of extension. The ugliness of Tolle’s delivery further cloaks his fastball, and the line on it is incredibly difficult for hitters to match. He was able to excel throwing his heater 75% of the time in college, with the occasional slider tossed in. Though aspects of his mechanics are kind of hideous looking, Tolle’s head is quite still throughout his delivery, and he clearly has the size and build of a durable starter. A limited repertoire and Tolle’s mechanical look made him seem reliever-y, at least to me, while he was in college, but now we’re in year three of consistent fastball strike throwing all while Tolle adjusts to the power of plus velo and a fresh approach to pitching.

His secondary pitches are being used more than in college by a wide margin. A mid-80s cutter/slider (also about four ticks harder this year) serves as an in-zone offering to set up his elevated fastballs. Tolle creates fair action on a tailing changeup that tends to finish kind of high, but this may as well be an entirely new pitch; it was barely part of Tolle’s college mix. Though I’d stop short of calling Tolle’s secondaries plus right now, this a lot of positive change for a college-aged prospect in a fairly short period of time, and either of them might still have another gear. Can Tolle sustain this velo across an entire season? Yes, he’s throwing harder, but he’s done so across half the number of innings he worked as a junior at TCU. It’s a big enough velo leap to buy that at least a portion of it is sticky, and most importantly Tolle seems to have the fastball command to weaponize the non-velo traits that make his heater effective. His floor is that of an utterly dominant reliever, and he’ll be a mid-rotation guy if his secondary stuff keeps evolving.

Clarke was committed to South Carolina, but his arm strength improved throughout 2024 and he properly blew up at that year’s Draft Combine, where he touched 98 and sat 95-plus. He signed for $400,000 and has been one of the bigger “arrow up” prospects in baseball during the last nine months, as Clarke was parked at 96-97 and touching 100 in the early going of 2025, and had developed a nasty slider that was not quite there at the Combine.

Clarke is one of the many prospects in this system who generates something approaching elite extension down the mound; in Clarke’s case, that’s a shade over seven feet. His delivery is more cross-bodied now than it was when he was drafted. He delivers from a relatively true three-quarters slot, but with vertical hand position on release. The line on his heater is absolutely brutal around the hands of left-handed hitters. Clarke was a curveball/changeup guy at the Combine but now has a lethal upper-80s slider that will crest 90 mph with huge length, and it plays up because of the changes made to his delivery. I thought he had the makings of a good changeup when I saw him last year, but that pitch has barely been featured in 2025 because Clarke hasn’t needed it.

He’s perhaps a bit skinnier than most workhorse big league starters, but he fits the bill as an athlete. Because his track record of throwing hard predates just the little bit we’ve seen this season, I feel better about that part of Clarke’s game being real and sustainable than I would were he just showing this velo in April and May alone. He’s going to be an All-Star if he can sharpen his fastball command or develop a good third pitch, like a change or split. If he can’t, he’ll still likely be a high-leverage reliever.

Despite posting red flag A-ball strikeout rates, Garcia made the bottom of the 2023 Red Sox prospect list because of his physicality and power. He’s listed at just 163 pounds on his player page, but he’s about 70 pounds heavier than that, and most of that is muscle. Garcia has thunderous power to the opposite field, and his swing’s finish is incredibly ferocious. This is a physically dense young man who has a shocking amount of fluidity in his hips and shoulders for someone so strong. Garcia’s all-fields power was really only evident during in-person looks in prior years, but he finally produced on paper in 2024, hitting 14 first-half home runs, more than he had in his first three seasons combined. He ended the season with 52 extra-base hits and a month of surprisingly stable strikeout rates at Double-A Portland. In 2025, his first on the 40-man roster, Garcia is continuing to post a relatively stable contact performance at Triple-A Worcester, with an OPS well over .800 as of this update.

Do Garcia’s dwindling strikeouts reflect real, profile-altering improvement in this area? Some of his data suggests not. Garcia is still chase-prone, something that also wasn’t evident on his résumé until he got regular reps in full-season ball. He’s big and strong enough that it’s possible his feel for producing power will mimic Teoscar Hernández or Nick Castellanos, who have produced like you’d want a Top 100 Prospect to despite a lot of chase and strikeouts. Though The Password entered 2025 as a Pick to Click, there still feels like there’s too much volatility on offense to slide him into the 50 FV tier and the Top 100.

Where Garcia’s evaluation has moved this spring is in center field. He looks more and more comfortable out there all the time, and has begun making casual over-the-shoulder grabs on relatively tough reads. His pure arm strength is much better than his accuracy, and at this size, it’s possible Garcia will only remain speedy enough for the position in his absolute physical prime, but he’s now tracking like a viable center fielder who deserves a prolonged big league opportunity within the next year or so to see if his hit tool will perform enough for him to be an everyday player. That probably makes him trade fodder due to the crowded field around him in Boston.

A deceptive lefty whose moniker will have a certain musicality to it in the local dialect, Early transferred from Army to UVA for his draft year in 2023, then had a tremendous full-season debut in 2024 during which he K’d 12/9 IP across 103.2 innings, including eight Double-A starts at the end of the year.

A quick-armed, 6-foot-3 southpaw, Early tends to pitch off of his slider and then uses a changeup (his nastiest pitch) as a finisher. Though his fastballs (a mix of sinkers and elevated four-seamers) tend to only sit 92-94 and peak a little above that, Early’s release looks tough to pick up. He generates a little over six-and-a-half feet of extension, hitters often look uncomfortable against him, and he induces a ton of weak contact. He had a 54% groundball rate in 2024, and in the early going of 2025, hitters have a sub-.200 xwOBA against both his slider and changeup.

To the eye, Early doesn’t have especially great feel to pitch. His inconsistent release results in a fairly crude, control-over-command style, and he entered 2025 on the starter/reliever line. Most pitchers are trying to locate their secondary pitches just off either side of the plate; Early’s slider and changeup both tend to finish in the middle of it. You could make a good argument that because Early’s secondary pitches are generating such weak contact, this is a feasible approach for him, but it is atypical for a starter. That said, Early might yet develop in this area; remember that he was in the Patriot League just a couple of years ago. Also recall that his performance waned late last year as he set a career high in innings pitched.

This is a potential offseason Top 100 prospect if one or both of the command and durability boxes get checked throughout 2025. My instincts when watching Early throw a baseball are that there’s a fair amount of relief risk here, but his case on paper is more favorable, and the need for starter inventory all but assures that he will be given a long runway to iron out his command wrinkles.

Narváez has historically been written up favorably at this site, and given Connor Wong’s struggles, it seemed feasible that he’d compete for regular reps in 2025, but even I (and likely the Red Sox) didn’t anticipate he’d be this good right away. The Yankees, who had a catching logjam on their 40-man and traded Narváez for a good mid-minors pitching prospect named Elmer Rodriguez-Cruz and pool space toward the end of Winter Meetings, inadvertently filled what was arguably their biggest rival’s biggest need.

Narváez is hitting a bit better than his true talent level to this point (his wOBA is about 30 points above expectation), but he’s still a competent enough offensive player to be a second-division primary catcher. He’s vulnerable to high fastballs and slider chase, but he crushes mistake breaking balls and has enough strength to do oppo doubles damage when he gets extended on fastballs out away from him. He’s going to be a below-average contact hitter who runs into enough power to be a relevant offensive threat at the bottom of Boston’s order.

Where Narváez excels is on defense. He’s a quiet pitch framer and reliable ball-blocker whose quick exchange bolsters his relatively average pure arm strength. His ability to do the little things well on defense stands in stark contrast to the way Wong looked last year. There isn’t really a star-quality upgrade at catcher lurking in the system behind Narváez. He could maybe use a lefty-hitting caddy, but he seems poised to be Boston’s primary backstop for a while and is talented enough for that to be an acceptable, borderline exciting proposition.

Yowzers, this is a talented and electric prospect. Soto is a projectable switch-hitting shortstop who got stronger during the commitment window in the lead up to signing with Boston for $1.4 million in January. He was ranked 11th on the International Amateur Board, essentially graded as the sort of prospect who’d be drafted in the comp or early-second round, and Soto’s look early in pro ball is even more sensational and has already caused him to be elevated into the area more associated with a mid-first round pick.

Both of Soto’s swings are fairly long — his hands load late and deep — but they’re ferocious and should shorten up as he gets stronger and gains experience against pro-quality stuff. He has uncommon power potential from both sides of the plate, particularly for an infielder. His growing size creates risk that he’ll need to move off of shortstop eventually. Among the more magmatic, high-variance prospects in the minors, there are paths where Soto is a K-prone third baseman and others where he’s a 25-homer shortstop. As his career unfolds, his forecast is trending toward the latter.

Valera was a pop-up arm on the Fort Myers complex last year and ended his season with seven starts in A-ball at age 18. His heater was sitting 93-96 at that time. He came to camp in 2025 with way more heat and was touching 100 during the first two months of the season before he was shelved in late May with elbow soreness. He remains out as of this update.

Valera has about as much upside as any arm in the BoSox system, you just have to project more on both of his secondary pitches and command to get there. Though Valera could reasonably be classified as physically mature for his age, his lower body is constructed like Brian Westbrook’s, with enormous thighs that help Valera generate power that eventually explodes out of his pitching hand. Like a lot of Sox prospects, he is a phenomenal hip-and-shoulder athlete who creates huge separation before he uncoils. There’s effort here, yes, but not so much that it damns Valera to the bullpen. His head is still through release and his lower half stays balanced despite all that power. The elbow issue puts a damper on things, but Valera looks like someone who can sit 95-plus and touch 100 as a starter. He gets to a fairly vertical position on release and his fastball has a nearly perfect 12:00 axis, sometimes cutting on him. Valera’s slider will flash plus but it doesn’t live there, and too often it ends up in the middle of the zone. His changeup is more crude and might be tough for him to turn over from his slot, though he may already have the kick change style cambio because this is a guy whose heater kind of cuts. Those things, as well as starter’s stamina and durability, are what to monitor for improvement as Valera climbs. He’s a potential impact starter whose talent is on par with a late first round pick.

Paez is among the most entertaining pitchers in the minors, a whippy-armed lower slot guy with an incredibly fast arm action and great secondary stuff. The undersized, low-three-quarters righty began his pro career as a sinker merchant with precocious command. Then in 2024, his secondary pitches and velocity both took a meaningful leap compared to 2023 and Paez retained his incredible command in the process. As a 20-year-old swingman working up to five innings per outing, Paez pitched 96.2 innings and posted a 10.52 K/9, 1.12 BB/9, and 3.17 ERA at (mostly) High-A.

Paez’s athleticism is evident in his delivery and in some of his data. He’s a wispy 6-foot-1 but generates six feet, nine inches of extension because of his enormous hop down the mound. For all of the effort with which Paez throws, he doesn’t miss his spot very often. He’ll bury his sinker in locations that make it impossible to elevate, run it back over the corner of the plate for a strike, use it to set up his excellent changeup with precise arm-side location, and occasionally run his heater up the ladder, where it can slip past certain hitters’ bats because of its angle. Paez’s slider, which spins it at 2,700-2,800 rpm on average, was four ticks harder in 2024 than in 2023, and averaged 82 mph. His ability to attack with lateral fastball/slider divergence and then pull the string with his changeup is very advanced and special.

Early in 2025, his release point changed. It rose about four inches and detracted from Paez’s fastball’s effectiveness during his first couple of starts before he was shut down with what the team is calling a calf strain. He seems to have added a cutter as well. These are key variables to watch out for when Paez returns. Though he was an offseason Top 100 inclusion because of his freaky command, these seemingly detrimental changes and the injury create risk and volatility, and force a little slide. If Paez can return and pitch effectively throughout the second half of the season, he should be added to the 40-man in the offseason and debut in 2026.

Tibbs was a consistent three-year performer at Florida State, where he hit .338/.462/.685 throughout his career. He had a power leap as a junior, doubling his career home run total with 28 draft-year bombs; he also improved his K-to-BB ratio, with 58 walks and 37 strikeouts in 320 PA. He had one of the 2024 draft’s higher floors as a lefty bat with a stable blend of contact and power. A really putrid post-draft summer cast a pall on his profile until Tibbs was able to right the ship in 2025; he was sent back to Eugene and was hitting .245/.377/.480 with 12 homers in 56 games prior to the Rafael Devers trade. Boston promoted him to Double-A upon his acquisition.

Tibbs’ lightning quick hands allow him to snatch inner-half pitches to his pull side and generate oppo contact on pitches that travel deeper in the zone. For how compact he is, Tibbs is quite strong and uses the ground well to help him generate power. He’s of medium build at a relatively maxed-out 6-feet tall and doesn’t produce monster peak exit velos (his max exits are roughly average), but he consistently hits the ball hard and in the air, which speaks to the verve in his hitting hands. He crushes in the middle of the plate, but looks much less comfortable facing lefties, and has had some trouble covering the up-and-away portion of the zone because his hips tend to bail toward first base as he unwinds.

Tibbs also needs to improve on defense. Some of this might be that the turf in Eugene creates a fast track of sorts for batted balls, but he has played some routine singles into triples this year because the baseball gets behind him, and he sometimes looks uncomfortable at the catch point on routine fly balls. He has a good arm and should be developed in right field, but he has some work to do out there if he’s going to be an average defender. Tibbs is a good hitter and prospect whose reasonable outcomes are that of a righty-mashing platoon outfielder who may need to be subbed out against lefties or for a defensive replacement. If he can improve in even one of those areas, then he’ll project more like an everyday player. He’s tracking to debut sometimes in late 2027 or 2028.

Romero ranked 37th on the 2022 Draft Board and was selected 24th overall, receiving a $2.3 million bonus to forego a commitment to LSU. High school Romero was viewed as one of the draft’s more polished prep hitters, a sweet-swinging middle infielder who might not stick at shortstop. Lower back stiffness sidelined him for most of 2023 and those issues persisted into the start of 2024. When he was finally deemed healthy in the middle of May, the Red Sox effectively skipped Romero over Low-A (he only played there for a month in 2023) and sent him straight to Greenville. He hit well enough there to earn a late-season promotion to Portland, and all told in 2024, Romero slashed .271/.312/.509 with a terrifyingly low walk rate (5%). He’s back in Portland and has a strong surface-level statline, including twice as many walks.

Look under the hood and Romero is more of a mixed bag. While his baseline chase rate has backed off, he’s still expanding at a 50% clip with two strikes, which is nearly two standard deviations worse than the big league average. He’s also running a sub-70% contact rate as of list publication, which only a handful of qualified big leaguers carry each year (the major league average is 77%). He has issues covering the outer third, and swings underneath a ton of fastballs finishing away from him. Romero still has a good-looking low-ball swing and the explosive hitting hands that made him an exciting draft prospect. He has impressive all-fields power for a hitter his age and is pulverizing the ball when he actually makes contact.

His build is fairly mature for a 21-year-old athlete, and Romero’s mobility on defense isn’t great; he takes quite a while to turn the baseball around to first base. His throwing stroke and accuracy also look a little odd (Romero has an over-the-top arm slot atypical of an infielder), and he takes a while to get rid of the baseball. There was a point last year when this could have reasonably been explained as rust coming off of injury, but we’re a good distance away from that now. There’s a chance Romero doesn’t stick on the infield at all, and even if he does, he’s going to be below average. There’s enough lefty pop here to consider Romero a priority prospect, but he’s got some risk indicators, both visually and from a data standpoint.

Cespedes signed for $1.4 million in 2023 and was the 18th-ranked prospect in that year’s class entirely because of his bat. He had a great 2023 pro debut in the DSL and was off to such a hot start in the 2024 FCL that he was promoted to Low-A as an 18-year-old after just 25 games in Fort Myers. He never played there, as a broken left hamate squashed the rest of his regular season. Cespedes was back for instructional activity in the fall and broke 2025 camp with Salem, where he’s having a better season under the hood (in terms of his TrackMan contact and power stats) than he is on the surface (his wRC+ is a little below average as of this update).

This guy’s hand speed is pretty nutty and he has real pull power. He’s a violent rotator with plus bat speed and exciting measureable pop for a 19-year-old. A pull-only approach to contact combined with dicey, red flag plate discipline causes Cespedes to swing inside a ton of sliders. He’s a second base-only infield athlete (he’s better there now than he was last year, but he’s also a heavier-bodied guy who might have mobility issues in his mid-20s) who needs to keep raking because there’s not really a utility fallback option for Cespedes. He’s either going to hit enough to be an everyday second baseman or he’s not. He pretty clearly has the power (and the ability to access it), but there are warning signs regarding his hit tool and on-base skills that readers should be aware of.

Perales had Tommy John in the middle of 2024 and was cleared to throw from flat ground in mid-February; more recently, he has been throwing bullpens in Fort Myers. He might be able to return before the very end of the season or in the 2025 Arizona Fall League, and I imagine there’s a good chance MLB will grant the Red Sox an extra option year for Perales due to the injury.

Regardless of the surgery, Perales projected in relief due to the extreme, high-effort nature of his delivery and his relative lack of size. Perales was sitting 96-98 and touching 100 before the TJ, which was up two ticks from the 2023 season. Another reason Perales profiled in relief: His due north arm slot created downhill angle on his fastball that made it vulnerable to contact. Around the time he blew out, he was allowing a wOBA of nearly .400 on that pitch and generating an average CSW% for a fastball. He seemed to be taking a cutter-heavy approach last year, though I think some of the pitches the auto pitch-tagging classified as his cutter were actually splitters that cut on him.

Make no mistake, this is a buck nasty pitching prospect with late-inning stuff. His cutter has slider shape when it’s located down, but it plays like a cutter when it’s located up, and Perales’ splitter has enough depth to play as a bat-misser against hitters of either handedness. Last year was Perales’ first on the 40-man roster, and now he’ll spend just about all of his second one on the IL rehabbing from TJ. As I said, the Red Sox will almost certainly be granted a fourth option year for him, which would give them more time to stretch him back out as a starter if they want to, but if the big league team is competitive upon his return, they may be motivated to just put him in the bullpen and have him let it eat as a setup man or closer.

Dobbins was hidden as an underclassman at Texas Tech because he was a reliever as a freshman, his sophomore year was wiped out due to COVID, and he blew out and needed TJ as a junior. Pro ball, on the other hand, has been smooth sailing; Dobbins coasted through the low minors and reached Triple-A at the end of just his second full season with the Sox. He entered the 2025 season as a 40+ FV prospect, was quickly promoted to the big league club, and pitched enough to exhaust rookie eligibility before he was put on the IL with an elbow strain a few days before this update.

Dobbins doesn’t have an exciting athletic look or delivery, but he throws enough strikes to start and has a five-pitch mix. His panoply of breaking pitches (cutters up to 93 mph, sliders in the 81-84 mph range, upper-70s curveballs) are pretty average from a pure stuff standpoint, except for the curveball, which is his repertoire’s bat-misser. Late in the 2024 season, Dobbins’ splinker became more identifiable when he pitched in parks with publicly available TrackMan data. He wasn’t throwing it a ton in the big leagues, but this pitch’s long-term development is now the key variable influencing Dobbins’ future. It isn’t in a good enough place to give Dobbins a second weapon to deal with lefties (his fastballs plays down), which creates risk that Dobbins will be a better fit as a long reliever on a contending roster.

Musett is a semi-husky, power-hitting catcher whose body rotates like the head of an owl; when he swings, his hips look like they’ve been WD-40’d. He hasn’t slugged over .400 since the 2023 DSL, but his 2024 underlying data (including a hard-hit rate up over 40%) corroborated his visual report more than his surface stats. This year, Musett is ditching his leg kick with two strikes, which seems to rob him of his athleticism and rhythm. That might be part of why his underlying data has been less stellar so far this season, but the raw ingredients for Musett to be meaningfully good offensive catcher are here; he has good bat speed and in-the-box-athleticism.

Musett needs general polish as a defender, but he looks much better back there now than he did when I first saw him in Fort Myers last year. He’s throwing well (he’s accurate and routinely in the 1.95 range), and his hands have improved both at picking balls in the dirt and framing. He saw time at first base in the past, but that hasn’t been the case this year. This is a positive indication of the org’s opinion of his viability at catcher, and might also be another reason some of his offense has backed up a tad in 2025, what with the physical demands of the position. This is a good teenage catching prospect with a puncher’s chance to be a primary catcher down the road if his timing at the dish improves.

Big-framed and athletic, Sandlin spent two years at an Oklahoma JUCO prior to his lone season in Norman. For many, including yours truly, he was a 2023 spring training revelation, as Sandlin showed mid-90s arm strength and a promising breaking ball on the Royals’ backfields. His 2023 was cut short by an oblique injury, and then in the offseason he was traded from Kansas City to Boston for John Schreiber. Sandlin had a homer-prone 2024 (he coughed up 14 bombs in 57.1 IP) and again dealt with injury, this time forearm tightness. He’s having a solid 40-man platform year in Portland with an ERA just under 4.00 and a FIP just over 3.00 as of this update.

Sandlin continues to pump mid-to-upper-90s gas, sitting 94-97 and touching 99 in many of his starts, but his breaking balls (a slider in the 82-87 mph range, and a cutter that averages about 88 and will bump 92) have been very vulnerable to damage. They tend not to turn the corner consistently and sit in the middle of the zone, waiting to be touched up. He’s using a fairly slider-heavy approach to pitching and that offering is currently generating an above-average rate of miss in Portland (Sandlin started a combined no-hitter just before list publication), but there isn’t a second plus pitch here right now, and Sandlin has yet to demonstrate a starter’s durability. His projection has shifted more toward the bullpen, where he might be able to throw even harder than he is now (hence the bit of fastball projection here) and end up in something more than just a middle inning role.

Delzine is a very physical young righty who signed for $500,000 in January, which is a sizable bonus for an international amateur pitcher. He’s already experienced an uptick in stuff in the DSL, as he came to camp touching 94 and is now sitting 94-96 and touching 97. Delzine also has the makings of multiple plus secondary pitches. His slider and curveball (which might be the same pitch that he’s just using in different ways) both have power break and finish, and Delzine has shown glimpses of turning over a power-sinking changeup. Perhaps more impressive is that Delzine is throwing strikes, which is no small feat for a pitcher his age, let alone one whose stuff is exploding as we speak. The lone unchecked box on Delzine’s scout card is projectability. He’s already a strong, muscular, thicker young athlete, but he’s also already throwing as hard as you want him to; it’s not like we’re waiting on him to have a velo spike, it’s happening now. This is a high-upside pitching prospect who carries significant demographic risk and a deep timeline between now and when he reaches Boston. He looks like the kind of high school pitching prospect who goes in the mid-to-late first round of a draft.

Bleis signed for $1.5 million out of the Dominican Republic in January of 2021 and was a very buzzy early-career prospect (who I was over-excited about) because of his physical tools. There was minute there where the gap between the perceived talent of Bleis and Jackson Chourio was pretty small, as they were of similar build and bat speed. Instead, Bleis had a bad first month of full-season ball in 2023, subluxated his left shoulder during a swing at the end of May, and ended up needing season-ending surgery. Sent back to Low-A to start 2024, Bleis got off to a good start and was quickly promoted to Greenville, where the pace of play was a bit of a rude awakening. He’s back in Greenville for the first half of 2025 and has again made adjustments that have him performing from a power standpoint (a 122 wRC+ and 10 homers in his first 53 games) while still whiffing too much for comfortable everyday outfield projection.

Bleis’ swing is geared to pull in the extreme; we’re talking an Isaac Paredes-type of spray chart with an amazing 49% air pull percentage. And Bleis has, to his credit, clearly been working in the weight room to get stronger. He was narrow but whippy as a teen prospect, and is becoming more physical. He projects to have plus power at peak, and his style of contact should enable him to get to most of it despite a ton of strikeouts. But he can go through stretches where his swing decisions are pretty terrible (he pulls off a ton of sliders), and a low, hitchy load makes it tough for him to cover the top of the zone at times. He’s hovering right around a 70% contact rate so far in 2025, which is toward the bottom of the big league continuum but not altogether damning when you have this much power.

Bleis has the speed and range to play center and is comfortable going back on balls hit over his head. He’s less decisive when he needs to charge toward the infield, and he’s procedurally raw when it comes to things like communicating with the other outfielders and where he decides to throw the baseball. That applies to pretty much every aspect of Bleis’ game — he’s fairly immature on the field in a way that evokes a young Jose Siri, as do his tools. This is a very talented college-aged hitter with some red flags on the fringes of his profile. Like Siri, he could have a couple of years where the power really plays, while in others he’s striking out too much to be a good player.

Rivas is a speedy center field prospect who signed in January for $950,000, the second-highest bonus among Red Sox international amatuer signees this year. He’s a lanky speedster whose defensive ceiling is meaningful because of his wheels and arm strength. The sinewy outfielder also has an aggressive swing that generates plus bat speed. Rivas’ cut is very long and oppo-oriented, and he requires a ton of effort to swing hard. Whether or not he’ll be able to successfully track pro pitches with a swing like this is debatable, but he’s off to a good start in the 2025 DSL. Rivas’ defense gives him a reasonable extra outfielder floor. Outcomes above that will depend on him outperforming this hit tool performance, as well as how much strength Rivas adds as he ages. He has a great physical foundation on which to layer strength and has considerable long-term upside.

Cason had a velo spike as a senior, and after sitting about 90 mph during his showcase summer, he was more comfortably in the mid-90s leading up to the draft. The Red Sox gave him $1.25 million to eschew a commitment to Mississippi State with an eye on developing him as a two-way player, but Cason’s feel to hit is so raw that I don’t view him playing a position as a realistic possibility. This is a good pitching prospect, though. Cason is a powerful, mature-bodied athlete who gets deep into his lower body during his delivery and delivers from a vertical slot, creating ride on his heater. He was up to 97 in 2025 before he was shut down due to what has been described as general fatigue. He can’t really spin the baseball, but his slot helps him create tumble and depth on his breaking stuff. Right now he’s just a very athletic dev project with a potentially premium heater. He’s likely to pitch more during instructs than he is during the rest of the FCL season.

A very toolsy junior college prospect, it took $300,000 to keep Taylor from heading to Florida State for what would have been his third year of college. He’s a talented A-ball outfielder with strikeout issues that will likely be part of his game in perpetuity because of Taylor’s style of swinging. Taylor has been given a swing akin to Alex Verdugo’s; he has a big, slow leg kick, his hands load low, and he has an uppercut path through the zone. His front side often bails toward first base as he strides. This leaves him vulnerable to stuff tailing and bending away from him, but it also takes advantage of Taylor’s athleticism and helps him generate impressive power on contact. Taylor’s hard-hit rate as of list publication is well above the big league average, though his peak exit velocities are closer to average, which illustrates that this style of hitting helps him hit the ball consistently even though he doesn’t have monster raw pop.

His strikeouts are going to be a prohibitive aspect of Taylor’s profile, and he’s still more of a toolsy sleeper and older dev project than he is s truly ascendant prospect. This extends to center field, where Taylor’s development (and one’s ability to assess him) has been slow because he’s sharing time with Miguel Bleis and Yophery Rodriguez. He has a huge arm and runs well enough to play center, but his jumps can sometimes be a little crude.

Holobetz was Milwaukee’s fifth round pick last year and then was traded to Boston as part of the Quinn Priester deal. He’s built like a starter, moves like a starter, and commands the baseball, giving Holobetz a very high floor as a lock depth starter. Whether he roots himself in a big league rotation is going to depend on the growth of his secondary pitches. His low-80s slider lacks the raw power of a good modern slider, but Holobetz dots it. His changeup has long-term projection because of his fluidity and lovely arm stroke, but it isn’t a nasty pitch yet. His cutter probably needs more velo (it’s averaging about 85 mph right now) to be a real weapon. Holobetz is athletic and young, and was only recently drafted, so he has a ton of time to develop. He has a great pitchability foundation and looks like a low-variance backend starter.

Jordan’s impressive track record of hitting continues, as he has climbed from Portland to Worcester already in 2025 and is now a 22-year-old getting his feet wet at Triple-A. Jordan has been more patient this season than ever before. He used to be one of the swing-happiest players in the minors, with a 57% swing% in 2024, but he has been more in line with the big league average (47%) so far in 2025. Is that a change he can sustain, or is it a small sample blip? His two-strike chase rate is still a good bit higher than average, which is perhaps evidence of premeditated takes in early counts, or at least a more narrow approach in them. It’s kind of amazing how little Blaze has struck out considering how often he has chased historically. His K rates have been in the mid-teens for most of his pro career, and they’ve trended down as he’s ascended the minors. He has a flat bat path that covers the top of the zone well, he tends to make contact with a lot of the pitches he chases even when he expands, he’s making a roughly average rate of contact on the big league scale, and his measurable exit velocities have been better than average.

Why then is Jordan a lower-priority prospect who was passed over in last year’s Rule 5 Draft? The chase stuff is concerning when you’re talking about a bad corner defender. So many toolsier guys have been undone by that and that alone. Jordan is slow-of-foot and has well below-average range at third base, though he does other stuff well and could play there in a pinch. He has mostly played first base in 2025, and that’s his better position. Low-OBP first basemen need to have titanic power to be impact players, and while Blaze has meaningful pop, it’s not in Yordan Alvarez territory or anything like that. He’s going to be a solid big league role player but more in the 20-45 range if we’re lining up all the big league first basemen, akin to Ryon Healy.

Injuries and the pandemic limited Wehunt to just 11 innings in three seasons at Southern Miss before he transferred to Kennesaw State for his redshirt junior season. There Wehunt’s fastball averaged just shy of 93 mph, but he worked many more innings that year (76.1) than ever before and pitched pretty well (23.2% K%, 6.7% BB%, 3.21 FIP) for an inexperienced giant. At the time, Wehunt’s combo of size and athleticism (he was powering way down the mound in college and had a very loose arm) stood out, but his stuff did not. That has changed in pro ball, as he’s throwing two ticks harder and has added multiple new breaking balls.

Wehunt has a cutter, a sweeper, and a spike curveball that all have slightly different shapes and velocities spanning the 77-90 mph range. His slower breakers have late drop even though they lack spin, and the fact that they’re slower (like 80 mph) seem to confuse hitters who see this huge guy producing nearly seven feet of extension and throwing with Scherzer-esque violence and head whack. He’s also developing a splitter, which is new enough that when I first sourced data from the 2025 season, he hadn’t thrown enough of them for the pitch to show up on my spreadsheet. His split locations are scattered right now. There are barriers to him starting (his delivery is atypical, he could use a better offspeed pitch), but Wehunt has gotten better very quickly and, aside from the effort of his mechanics, he checks starter-y boxes in terms of size and lower body athleticism. The middle range of outcomes here is that Wehunt becomes a really nasty four-to-six out reliever. Wehunt was put on the IL the week before list publication with a shoulder injury.

Monegro was a little slow to leave rookie ball, but once he seemed ready to do so, the Red Sox accelerated his promotion pace and he pitched across three levels in 2023. In 2024, he had something of a bat-missing breakout, K’ing 11 per 9 IP at High-A Greenville while working a career-high 76 total innings. He wasn’t added to the 40-man roster and was passed over in the Rule 5 Draft, but he was still on a one- or two-year big league time horizon as a reliever.

Monegro has a starter’s frame at a high-waisted 6-foot-4, but his delivery is erratic and inconsistent, featuring trunk tilt to get him to a high arm slot. He mixes and matches many different pitches with late, nasty movement. He peppers the top of the zone with 94-mph fastballs and upper-80s sliders, then buries overhand curveballs and tail/sink changeups toward the bottom. It’s a well-developed pitch mix that at times suffers from imprecise execution. Monegro looks like a useful multi-inning reliever or swingman, but we’ll have to wait even longer now because he blew out shortly before this update and needed Tommy John that will likely shelve him for the bulk of 2026. He’s a 2026 Fall League candidate and, if he pitches well, should be put on the 40-man after next season and debut in a relief capacity in 2027.

Ehrhard is a short-levered, max-effort swinger who had an absurd power uptick as a junior, posting a .330/.458/.627 line after sub-.400 SLG as a sophomore. His swing is elaborate and noisy, but Ehrhard’s compact size helps keep him on time. His hitting hands are really fast, enabling him to pulverize pitches up around his hands to his pull side. Perhaps the craziest example of Ehrhard’s brand of athleticism occurs when his wildest swings finish and he has to catch himself from corkscrewing into the ground. I’m apprehensive about the viability of this approach against big league pitchers, but it was working well enough against High-A arms for Ehrhard to be promoted to Portland a month into the 2025 season. He’s a corner-only outfield defender with roughly average underlying contact and power metrics (though plus plate discipline) but a swing style that raises visual alarm.

Rodriguez had a fantastic pro debut in the 2023 DSL, where he slashed .253/.393/.449 with more walks than strikeouts. In 2024, the Brewers skipped him over the domestic complex and sent him straight to Low-A, where Rodriguez slashed .250/.343/.383 with a 23.8% K% as an 18-year-old. The latter stats are more in line with Rodriguez’s talent. He’s a tightly wound athlete with some effort to his swing, and it’s likely he’ll whiff underneath high fastballs as he faces better velocity. Against Low-A pitching he’s been able to cover most of the plate and spray low-lying contact from foul pole to foul pole. He can turn on pitches on the inner third but tends to be oppo-oriented throughout most of the zone. On paper, Yophery’s contact and power skills are just a little south of average. His contact rate (74%) and hard-hit rate (32%) are both fine, and made somewhat more impressive by Rodriguez’s age.

He isn’t overtly projectable and is definitely a “skills over tools” type whose offense is seasoned by his advanced feel for the strike zone. His feel does not extend to defense, where Rodriguez is fast, but also frustrating and unpolished. He may need to play a corner eventually, and the power to profile there likely won’t materialize. Improved defense is the biggest developmental key for Rodriguez and would allow him to play a sizable big league role as an oft-used fourth outfielder. He was acquired as part of a package for Quinn Priester early in 2025 and sent to Greenville.

Issues with the playability of his swing and inconsistent throwing accuracy continue to plague Alcantara’s profile, and at this stage, he’s tracking more like a low-end utilityman. Aside from the errant, one-hop throws to first, Alcantara is a very promising and exciting infield defender with plus range, hands, and acrobatic actions. His swing path cuts downward, and Alcantara’s lever length makes him very tardy to the contact point. He can’t do anything more than pepper the opposite field with line drives right now, though he does rotate hard and has consistently made a plus rate of contact. He’s a long-term developmental project who doesn’t belong at Double-A right now.

Uberstine tried to walk on to the team at Southern Cal but didn’t break onto a D-I roster until after an apprenticeship with former big leaguer Joe Beimel, who prolonged his pro career with Driveline Baseball’s training methods. Once Ubersine was throwing hard enough to make a team, he went to Northwestern and became a late pick. He missed basically all of 2023 and 2024 due to a Tommy John, and is now having something of a breakout at age 26.

The lower-slotted Uberstine has pitched well enough to be promoted from Portland to Worcester already this year. He’s playing “X Games” with his stuff, mixing his changeup and breaking balls to criss-cross the zone and keep hitters guessing. His best pitches are the changeups he runs off the hips of left-handed hitters and back onto the corner. He’s elevating his fastball for plus miss right now, but that pitch doesn’t look like a plus big league offering to the eye. Here Uberstine is projected as a lower-leverage long reliever whose stuff plays best when hitters only get to see him once, and don’t have multiple opportunities to adjust to his delivery and secondary-heavy style.

Mullins was a big time high school prospect but ended up at Auburn, where injuries were frequent, including a TJ that delayed his pro career until late in 2023. Since getting healthy, Mullins has has varied strike-throwing results depending on the year and level, and he dealt with shoulder fatigue for part of 2025. The injuries and erratic command suggest a relief future. Mullins has the look of a pretty standard second lefty in a good team’s bullpen. He elevates a 91-94 mph fastball that punches above its weight because of its angle and Mullins’ ability to hide the ball, and he has a slider that plays up against lefties for the same reasons. Those two pitches have constituted roughly 80% of Mullins’ pitches to this point in 2025. It was reasonable to try to develop Mullins as a starter because injuries likely stunted his development as an amateur. Now that he’s in his 40-man platform year, he perhaps should be shifted to the bullpen to see what happens to his velocity in one-inning bursts.

You can see the DNA of the swings of Sox prospects past in Azocar’s cut, as his hands work in a way that’s evocative of Roman Anthony and Marcelo Mayer. Azocar was promoted from the complex roster to Low-A Salem after a couple good weeks in Fort Myers and has been struggling to adjust to the better pitching. His swing is a little long and late getting back to the baseball right now, but he has good bat speed once his barrel gets going and also has substantial frame projection. This is a long, sinewy young hitter who should have big strength at maturity. The physical projection piece of Azocar’s profile is what creates this little gap between him and fellow precocious outfielder, Justin Gonzales. Signed for just $40,000 a year ago, Azocar is a power-oriented sleeper.

Bello had a dominant second DSL season in 2024 and was pitching in the Giants’ Complex League rotation in Arizona for the first part of 2025 when he was traded to Boston as part of the package for Rafael Devers. He has an east/west starter’s mix with very advanced command and three potentially average pitches. The best of these is Bello’s upper-70s slider, which he uses most of all, often as a way to get ahead of hitters. His fastball lives in the 88-92 mph range most of the time and has sink/tail action that is vulnerable to damage when Bello doesn’t locate it. Mostly, he does, though. For his age, he’s a fairly precise craftsman who knows how to start his sinker above the zone and drop it in the top for looking strikes. Bello repeats his release and is a coordinated athlete, but he’s not really an explosive one. He isn’t all that athletically projectable and isn’t a lock to throw harder as he matures. He’s going to command his stuff (and maybe add a cutter) en route to a backend starter role, which is still years away.

Fajardo signed for $400,000 in 2024, which is a lot for an international amateur pitcher, but he was quickly shipped from one sock color to the other in the Cam Booser trade. He pitched well enough at the start of the 2025 FCL season to be promoted to Salem. Fajardo is a physical teenager with advanced command and a precocious two-planed breaking ball. His fastball lives in the low-90s and peaks a little above that, and Fajardo’s size may not allow for much more. He locates his fastball and slider well enough to have starter projection, but his changeup is raw. He’s a nice lower-level dev arm who’s ahead of the developmental curve for his age.

Aita was a reliever as a freshman and moved into the Kennesaw State rotation as a draft-eligible sophomore. He can really spin it, with some of his sliders rotating at more than 3,000 rpm. He’s a four-pitch righty with a slider-heavy approach and starter-quality fastball command. Aita overwhelmingly works with his slider and fastball, and his slider’s performance might be suffering from how heavily he’s leaning on it. He’ll mix in a cutter and an upper-80s changeup, both of which are currently below average, but of course the 2025 season is only Aita’s second as a starter. He looks like a spot starter who has backend upside if one of his tertiary offerings takes a step forward.

Nunez is an uber-athletic infield athlete capable of making some incredible defensive plays because of his plus-plus range. At times, he can be overzealous and compound his team’s misfortune by turning what would be a tough-luck single into risky throwing error, but Nunez is still just a teenager in full-season ball learning the pace and standards of play. He has a strange, longer throwing motion than most infielders but otherwise projects to be a plus infield defender both in quality and versatility. That will hopefully facilitate a utility role for Nunez, because his offense is more volatile. He’s one of pro baseball’s most swing-happy players, cutting it loose just shy of 60% of the time as of this update. He’s a dangerous all-fields, high-ball hitter when he’s actually swinging at strikes, but stiff aspects of Nunez’s swing make it tough for him to adjust to softer stuff in the bottom of the zone even when he’s doing that. It’s plausible that Nunez will grow into enough power to mitigate this somewhat and turn into more of a premium utility option, but for now he looks like a future sixth infielder who brings plus speed and defense to the end of close games.

Guerrero is an arm strength maven whose stuff overpowered hitters in the lower minors. It’s been much tougher sledding for him as he’s climbed, and even though Guerrero will show you two or three plus pitches on any given night, their inconsistency often makes him hittable. Guerrero will touch 100, vary his breaking ball shape (sometimes on purpose, sometimes not) enough to conclude that he has two distinct offerings, and flash a plus splitter. When he misses his spot with any of them, he tends to be hittable. He has also tended to run walk rates in the teens, and graduates from rookie status having projected as an up/down reliever for the last couple of years.

Drohan was a Rule 5 pick of the White Sox in 2023 and was returned to Boston after struggling with walks. He was in the Triple-A rotation to start 2025 but went on the IL in May with elbow inflammation. Drohan scatters many different pitch types and lacks great feel for location. His best pitches are his power sinking changeup and a snappy in-zone curveball, but for the most part, Drohan’s other stuff requires better location to succeed than he has been able to develop. It limits him to more of an up/down role.

Hoppe was a fifth-year senior from UNC Greensboro whose fastball really popped when he moved to the bullpen in college; he was up to 97 mph during 2022 Regionals. After a dominant pro debut in 2023 (Hoppe was touching 100), he has had trouble throwing strikes and took a while to exit Double-A. He’s now at Worcester and has become a cutter/fastball guy whose pitches will touch 95 and 99, respectively. They play down a shade because Hoppe still has well below-average command and continues to walk hitters at a 12-13% clip, but this kind of arm strength almost ensures he’ll be a serviceable up/down option for as long as he throws this hard.

Rogers began the 2025 season back in Greenville for the third straight year but was quickly promoted to Portland, where he’s been deployed as a starter and in long relief. He hides the ball well and has two quality breaking balls in his upper-70s curveball and mid-80s slider, both of which have above-average bite. Rogers’ flat, 93-95 mph fastball has been generating plus miss so far this year but it’s realistically closer to an average big league offering, as it has a flat approach angle but lacks life. Rogers continues to track like a low-leverage long man.

Ingrassia was an athletic little college southpaw who transferred from San Diego State to Fullerton for his draft year and became the Titans’ closer. He’s had multiple injuries dating back to his sophomore year of college (chronologically: torn rotator cuff, shoulder swelling, elbow inflammation, and finally a shoulder that shelved him after a couple relief outings at the start of 2025), which, combined with his lack of size, gives Ingrassia the look of a bulk reliever. It seems that after a dalliance in the rotation last year, that is how Boston had settled on developing him before he was shut down, as he had yet to make a start. The Red Sox have made Ingrassia’s delivery more cross-bodied since college and coaxed more velo out of him; this was a guy sitting in the upper-80s at Fullerton who is now bumping 95. He’s a funky, low-slot lefty with whippy arm stroke that helps him sell his fading mid-80s changeup. The mechanical tweak has also aided the effectiveness of Ingrassia’s sweeping low-80s breaking ball. Because of his lack of size, it’s more likely that he ends up being a long reliever or swingman in the Ryan Yarbrough mold.

McShane succeeds in the same way a lot of Red Sox pitching prospects do: He’s big, he’s long, he powers way down the mound, and he employs a slider-driven vertical attack to set up elevated fastballs. He’s a small school arm from last year’s draft who is striking out a batter per inning at Greenville in a multi-inning relief role. McShane brings six-and-a-half feet of extension from a very vertical slot, and generates plus vertical break. His slot creates curveball shape on a slider that averages about 85 mph, though this pitch needs that velo because it frequently lacks depth. This is a pretty standard relief mix.