The Red Sox Are Stretched Thin by the Loss of Roman Anthony

Roman Anthony has made quite an impact for the Red Sox this season. When the no. 2 prospect on our preseason Top 100 Prospects list was summoned to Boston in June, the Red Sox were 32-35, closer to last place in the AL East than first. Less than a week after he arrived, Boston traded away Rafael Devers, and since then Anthony has been nothing less than the team’s top hitter while helping it post the AL’s best record over that span. Alas, the 21-year-old phenom may not be able to help the Red Sox nail down a Wild Card spot, as an oblique strain will likely sideline him for at least the remainder of the regular season — and perhaps longer.

Anthony suffered the injury during the fourth inning of Tuesday’s game against the Guardians at Fenway Park. He felt something on his left side after a checked swing, then struck out swinging at the next pitch, after which he grabbed his lower left side while walking away from the plate.

Anthony didn’t return to the field for the top of the fifth inning; instead, he was replaced by Nate Eaton. An MRI taken on Wednesday morning revealed what the outfielder told reporters is a Grade 2 strain, an injury that typically takes four to six weeks to heal.

Four weeks isn’t enough time to return before the end of the regular season (September 28) or the start of the Wild Card round (September 30). On Wednesday manager Alex Cora made clear that he didn’t expect Anthony back for the Division Series either, should the Red Sox make it that far. “I told him to envision ALCS, first at-bat,” he told reporters. As for what Cora told the rest of the team, the manager referred to the early-season loss of first baseman Triston Casas to a ruptured left patellar tendon, saying, “Keep going. Just like we did after Casas, [like] we did after the [Devers] trade, we keep going. At one point, he’s gonna be part of this, so just gotta be patient, but keep pitching, keep putting good at-bats, keep playing.”

Alex Cora's message to the Red Sox after the Roman Anthony injury: "Keep going. Just like we did after Casas, we did after the trade, we keep going. At one point, he's gonna be part of this, so just gotta be patient, but keep pitching, keep putting good at bats, keep playing." pic.twitter.com/5xVc7X0Rdw

— Red Sox on CLNS (@RedSoxCLNS) September 3, 2025

However long Anthony will be out, the Red Sox will miss him. The team, which is 78-63 overall, has gone an AL-best 46-28 since his arrival, climbing from fourth place in the AL East, 8 1/2 games behind the Yankees, to third, 3 1/2 games behind the Blue Jays (81-59) and half a game behind the Yanks (78-62). Over that timespan, their Playoff Odds improved from 18.8% to 97.2%.

In 71 games and 303 plate appearances, Anthony has hit .292/.396/.463 (138 wRC+) with eight homers while splitting his time between right field (32 starts), left field and designated hitter (17 starts apiece). Among the Red Sox, only the departed Devers has a higher OBP or wRC+ than Anthony unless one counts Nathaniel Lowe, who has hit a sizzling .324/.381/.568 (154 wRC+), albeit in just 42 plate appearances since signing with the team on August 18. Anthony’s 2.7 WAR leads Boston’s position players since his debut, just ahead of Trevor Story (2.6).

Anthony, whom the Red Sox signed to an eight-year extension worth at least $130 million (and possibly as much as $230 million) less than two months into his major league career, has been everything a team could have hoped for thus far — including a particularly effective catalyst atop the lineup. From July 27 to September 2, he batted leadoff in 27 of Boston’s 34 games, hitting .336/.439/.564 (174 wRC+) across 132 plate appearances in that capacity. Jarren Duran, the only other Red Sox player with at least 40 PA out of the leadoff spot, has led off 91 games and hit a comparatively tepid .262/.330/.429 (106 wRC+) in 425 PA in that role.

At times the Red Sox have had such a surplus of outfielders that they’ve used Ceddanne Rafaela — who’s second among all center fielders in FRV (16) and third in DRS (15) — to start 19 games at second base. But lately the outfield has been stretched thin due to injuries. The Sox are currently without outfielder Wilyer Abreu, who has made a team-high 90 starts in right field, generally as the long half of a platoon. The lefty-swinging 26-year-old is second on the team with 22 homers and has hit .253/.325/.486 (115 wRC+). He strained his right calf while tagging up from third base on August 17 against the Marlins and went on the IL on August 21. His recovery has been slower than expected; as of Monday, he was still not cleared to run at maximum speed.

This is Abreu’s second IL stint this year. His first, an 11-day absence for a mild oblique strain in June, precipitated Anthony’s call-up in the first place. Just before Abreu injured his calf a few weeks ago, his sometime platoon partner Rob Refsnyder missed 13 days due to a mild oblique strain of his own. With both players out, the team took a brief look at Jhostynxon Garcia, a 22-year-old righty who has hit .277/.352/.489 (124 wRC+) in 33 games at Double-A Portland and 71 at Triple-A Worcester. Called up on the same day Abreu went on the IL, the 45+ FV prospect nicknamed “The Password” started three games for the Red Sox, all against lefties, while making a couple of ninth-inning cameos. (He has since been optioned back to Triple-A.) In that limited slice of playing time, he went 1-for-7 with a double, two walks, and five strikeouts. Strikeouts have been a problem throughout Garcia’s career; he’s been punched out 27.8% of the time at Worcester, has just a 68.4% contact rate there, and according to our prospect expert Eric Longenhagen, has just a 30-present and 40-future grade on his hit tool.

With Duran in left field and Rafaela in center, for the time being the Red Sox do have stability in two-thirds of their outfield. Without both Anthony and Abreu, Cora has indicated that right field will be a patchwork, one that could include not only Refsnyder (who was activated on August 28) and Eaton, but also Masataka Yoshida, who hasn’t played the position since coming over from Japan ahead of the 2023 season, and who’s played only one inning in left this year after doing so for just 24 innings in 2024.

“Obviously, we’re waiting for [Abreu] to get back, we’re moving around — Masa probably plays a little bit out there,” Cora said. “We’ll mix and match, just like we’ve been doing throughout the season. We’ll be OK.”

The problem for the Red Sox is that since Abreu went down, Refsnyder and Yoshida were already doing the bulk of the DH work, largely split up along platoon lines. If they’re both playing regularly, one in right and the other at DH, somebody will be overexposed:

The 34-year-old Refsnyder, now in his fourth year as a handy reserve for the Red Sox, hits lefties well; in fact, he’s got a career .281/.383/.440 (128 wRC+) line against them, but just a .231/.302/.331 (76 wRC+) line against righties. The 32-year-old Yoshida has hit righties at a .293/.345/.449 (117 wRC+) with Boston, but he’s slashing just .240/.314/.346 (82 wRC+) against lefties. After undergoing surgery to repair the labrum in his right (throwing) shoulder last October, he didn’t return to the Red Sox until July 9, and he has yet to get going offensively. The 28-year-old Eaton, a right-handed hitter, has been bouncing back and forth between Triple-A and the majors for the past three seasons (2023 and ’24 with the Royals). He can also play third base, but at least as far as his offense goes, he has yet to sustain any success at the major league level, hitting .218/.280/.292 (58 wRC+) in 226 career plate appearances. He did bat leadoff on Wednesday against Guardians lefty Joey Cantillo, but if his bat isn’t up to the task and Cora prefers to keep Duran batting third, Refsnyder and fellow righty Romy Gonzalez, who’s hit .302/.339/.494 (123 wRC+) overall while splitting time between second and first (where he’s lately been platooning with Lowe), are the top candidates to bat first, at least when facing a lefty.

Not that it means anything to Boston’s fate this fall, but Anthony’s injury probably slams the door on any chance he had of winning the AL Rookie of the Year award. At this point, the Athletics’ Nick Kurtz figures to be the odds-on favorite, with 28 homers (including four in one game), a 177 wRC+, and 4.2 WAR — all tops among rookies in either league. It would have taken some kind of great September and a key role in a playoff push for Anthony to overcome those advantages.

If there’s good news for the Red Sox, it’s that they’ve played pretty well despite dealing with a slew of injuries. According to the Baseball Prospectus Injury Ledger, their 1,434 player-games lost to injury ranks fifth in the majors behind the Dodgers, Astros, Mets, and Orioles. Still, with the exception of Alex Bregman, who missed seven weeks during the first half due to a right quad strain, none of those other absences were of position players of Anthony’s caliber, and at a time when the team is neck-and-neck for the top Wild Card spot, being without Anthony could spell the difference between playing the best-of-three Wild Card Series entirely in Fenway Park (as the top Wild Card and fourth seed) and doing so at Yankee Stadium (as the second Wild Card and fifth seed). There’s no getting around it: This injury really hurts.