Laws minor-league scouting: Red Sox got a steal with Roman Anthonys beautiful swing
Outfielder Roman Anthony isn’t just Boston’s breakout prospect this year, he might be the biggest breakout prospect in all of the minors. Anthony went from a promising hitter who looked like he’d have a long path to the majors to reaching Double A to end his first pro season. He’s hit .267/.399/.463 on the year, and was much better in High A than Low A, with 12 of his 14 homers coming for High-A Greenville before a September promotion to Double-A Portland. He’s also drawn 86 walks, putting him in the top 30 of all minor-league players and the top 10 among teenagers.
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I ranked Anthony 12th in the Red Sox’s system coming into the year, but noted his high contact rate in a small sample in his debut, saying “If he’s that much more advanced a hitter than the industry thought, the Red Sox got a steal.” I think they did.
I saw Anthony and Portland, Boston’s Double-A affiliate, at Reading last Saturday night in a game that was suspended by rain. The Sox deserve credit for taking what was already a good swing and turning it into one of the best in the minors, and maybe the best I’ve seen in person all year. They’ve loosened Anthony up at the plate, from his setup, where his hands are more free, to his actual swing, where his lead arm stays slightly bent so he doesn’t lose contact quality or bat speed at his follow-through.
When people talk about pretty left-handed swings, they mean this. That wouldn’t mean much without a strong eye, but Anthony has already shown excellent plate discipline and coverage for his age, including very low chase rates, especially before he gets to two strikes. I only saw three at-bats before the rains came, but I got several swings that were picture-perfect along with two hard line-drive doubles to center field.
I bumped him up to No. 45 in my midseason ranking of the top prospects in baseball, and now that he’s had even more success and even hit well in Double A, while still playing solid defense in center, he’s going to be even higher this offseason.
More scouting notes from my recent viewings of prospects:
• Right-hander Wikelman Gonzalez started the game for Portland and went three innings before the game was suspended due to torrential rain, but did show a big-league fastball, coming from a low 3/4 slot at 95-98 mph with a ton of ride and some late hop to the pitch. He didn’t command it at all, but it missed bats in and around the zone when he got close. His secondaries were well behind the fastball, with a fringy curveball at 80-82 mph and changeup that lacked action or enough deception at 89-90 mph, although the latter pitch still got some bad swings because hitters were trying to catch up to the heater. He walked three of the first eight hitters he faced, despite pitching with a lead from the moment he took the mound, and has a 14 percent walk rate since his promotion to Double A. That fastball will play but he doesn’t repeat the arm stroke or even the release point, and I think command is going to make it hard for him to stay a starter.
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• Second baseman Nick Yorke has recovered nicely from a disappointing 2022 season, hitting .260/.350/.437 for Portland in his age-21 season. He’s always had a great swing, but he’s a little caught between trying to hit for average/contact and hit for power, so he’s not hitting as many line drives as he should with a swing like his. As is, this year’s line is probably a good facsimile of what he’ll do in the majors – a little of everything, but not much of anything in particular. I do think he could hit for a much higher average if he stopped trying to loft the ball so much, as he did in his second at-bat in the game I saw, overrotating on a slider but hitting just a lazy fly ball because he has just fringe-average power.
• This was my first look at Blaze Jordan this year and I was surprised by how much thicker he looked, with everything about him slower than it was even just a year ago. He’s struggled badly since he moved up to Double A about two months ago, hitting .254/.296/.402 with a ton of contact (14 percent strikeout rate) but no results. Boston’s third-round pick in the 2020 draft, Jordan was always known for his raw power, and did have a dozen homers in 73 games in High A before the promotion, but he’s already slowed down enough at age 20 that he’s going to be limited to first base, and I didn’t see the bat speed he’ll need for the bat to profile there.
The jump over High A to Double A has been a bit much for Dylan Crews. (Diamond Images / Getty Images)• On Tuesday night I hit my last minor league game of the regular season, going to Harrisburg for their series against Bowie. Harrisburg’s roster was so loaded by this series that they didn’t have enough at-bats for everyone, but I did get Dylan Crews, the second pick in this year’s draft. Crews saw nine pitches in his first at-bat, eventually hitting a line-drive double to the right-field corner, then hitting a soft line-drive single to left in his next at-bat before a pair of groundouts. The jump over High A to Double A has been a bit much for Crews, as he’s hitting .188/.296/.261 so far in 19 games at the higher level, although I wouldn’t read too much into it.
• James Wood has been with Harrisburg for about two-thirds of the season and is leading the club with 17 homers, so his huge power is still intact but the 20-year-old has had issues with contact, striking out in a third of his plate appearances there. His issues are twofold: his offspeed recognition isn’t advanced enough for Double A and his strike zone is huge because he’s 6-foot-7. The former is the bigger issue right now, which is good news for Wood and the Nats because it’s a lot easier to improve a hitter’s pitch recognition than it is to make him shorter. On Tuesday, he whiffed on three sliders in four at-bats, two in the zone and the third out of the zone for a strikeout, and then struck out later in the game on a fastball that was below his knees. He was the DH that night, so I didn’t get to see any of his stellar defense in center.
• Robert Hassell III came over with Wood in the Juan Soto trade, and his year has been the most disappointing of any of the quintet of prospects the Nats received in that deal, as he’s hit just .225/.318/.325 for Harrisburg this year, and really hasn’t hit at all since the swap – his overall line in 112 games in the Nats’ system is .220/.322/.313, a far cry from the .302/.390/.469 line he put up in the Padres’ system. It’s a little of everything, but the biggest problem I could see is that he lacks strength. He’s putting the ball on the ground too often and not making much hard contact at all, nowhere near as much as he’ll need to make to profile as a regular, and worse, he’s fouling off a lot of fastballs he should be able to hit. The strikeout rate is too high, but he’s not chasing much, and he’s not swinging and missing excessively in the zone, so all is not lost, but he’s got to add a lot of muscle this offseason.
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• Right-hander Cole Henry came on in relief for Harrisburg, just his 13th appearance of the season. He was the Nats’ second-round pick in 2020, but he’s been beset by injuries, most recently a surgery to address thoracic outlet syndrome in August 2022, and has thrown just 111 innings total in three full seasons in the system. His 2023 season is a bit of extended rehab, and he has a 10.90 ERA for Harrisburg with 13 walks in 17.1 innings, but the good news is that his fastball is back – he was 95-98 mph across 1 2/3 innings, with an average, slurvy breaking ball and a potentially average changeup at 87-88 mph. He just didn’t show any command of any pitch; the fastball would play if he was even close to the plate, and I think the breaking ball would be a 55 with any consistency. He’d be someone to watch early next year as a potential reliever for the big club.
• The one prospect of note in Bowie’s lineup was Samuel Basallo, who was just promoted to Double A for this final series. He was the designated hitter on Tuesday night, so I didn’t get a look at his receiving, but I did see several of his at-bats and can offer two observations: He is very strong, and he swings very hard. Basallo went 1 for 4 with an infield single in the game, but lined out hard to left field and swung and missed just once, on a slider out of the zone. He’s pretty short to the ball, so he can cover the plate well, and I’d be shocked if he didn’t end up a 25-homer guy in the majors with this bat speed and 20 homers this year across three levels.
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(Top photo of Roman Anthony: Tom Priddy / Four Seam Images via AP)
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