Don’t Look Now, But Roman Anthony Might Be The Stud We Thought He Was All Along
Roman Anthony hasn’t played a major league baseball game since May 6th. He’s missed a finger sprain’s worth of wrist jokes, a managerial firing, a 15-game winning streak, and one of the more dramatic turnarounds in recent Red Sox memory.
And as of August 18, he’s finally back on a baseball field — not at Fenway, but at Hadlock Field in Portland, Maine, taking rehab at-bats for the Double-A Sea Dogs while Boston fights for a playoff spot without him. Anthony wasted no time, going yard in his first rehab game with Portland.
The good news for Anthony now is that the expectations are as low as they’ve ever been. Anthony has clearly been in the proverbial ‘doghouse’ with the Sox. Anthony and former pal Marcelo Mayer were known as the ‘Seaport Boys’ for their hard partying ways down in the Seaport district of Boston.
From the outside looking in, it has felt like Anthony was on a path to nowhere with the Sox. The Sox even moved him down to Florida, many speculating so they could separate him from his buddy Marcelo.
So no, Anthony doesn’t need to rescue a sinking ship. The Red Sox already did that themselves. The question now is what happens when a talented rookie (with clearly some question marks) finally gets to climb aboard.
From Parkland phenom to $130 million cornerstone
Anthony’s path here has been about as steep as prospect trajectories get. A 79th-overall pick out of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2022, he signed for an over-slot $2.5 million bonus and tore through Boston’s farm system, going from a .228 hitter struggling at Single-A Salem in 2023 to the consensus No. 1 prospect in baseball by September 2024.
He debuted on June 9, 2025, against Tampa Bay at 21 years old — the youngest Red Sox player to reach the majors since Rafael Devers — and needed almost no time to adjust. By August he was the American League’s Rookie of the Month, hitting .304 with six home runs and a .520 slugging percentage.
Boston was convinced that Mayer was their guy and on August 6, 2025, they signed him to an eight-year, $130 million extension, locking him up as a building block through 2034.
An oblique strain ended his rookie year early, but he still finished third in AL Rookie of the Year voting and made the All-Rookie team. Then, in February, he went to the World Baseball Classic and hit .280 with a .920 OPS for Team USA, including the game-winning home run against the Dominican Republic in the semifinals — the youngest player ever to homer in a WBC semifinal or final.
So, many fans forget that despite some of the public outcry over Anthony milking his injury and potentially not committing to a real rehab, the organization has already bet a quarter-billion dollars in Anthony as a franchise cornerstone. So, there’s clearly a vested interest for Anthony to be successful with the Sox. They didn’t feel the same way about Marcelo Mayer, but Roman Anthony has already proven that he can do it at a major league level.
A wild season, minus its top young player
Boston opened 2026 flat and got worse, stumbling to 10-17 by late April — bad enough that the Sox fired manager Alex Cora, two years removed from extending him, and handed the job to Chad Tracy, who’d been managing Triple-A Worcester.
Anthony himself was struggling too, hitting just .229 through his first 30 games, though his .354 on-base percentage provided some hope, as Cora even noted that he was ‘starting to settle in’ right before disaster struck: a check-swing foul ball in Detroit sprained a ligament near his right ring finger, and on May 8 he landed on the 60-day injured list.
A hoped-for return by mid-May turned into June setbacks, which turned into a July where he was still just hitting off a tee, which turned into a real possibility he wouldn’t play again until September.
And then, almost in spite of all that, Boston caught fire anyway. Behind a pitching staff that turned into one of the best in the sport, the Red Sox ripped off a 15-game winning streak, later reeled off eight straight wins over the Yankees to match a mark last hit in 2009, and climbed from 14 games under .500 to 12 games over it in about six weeks — a turnaround ESPN called one of the more remarkable in recent baseball history.
As of August 19, Boston sits at 68-59, holding the second American League Wild Card spot and sitting a healthy 5.5 games clear of the cutoff line, even after cooling off slightly down the stretch.
So what does Anthony actually add?
The Red Sox have thrived without Anthony, thus, he has had little to do with the Sox success this season. He’s walking into a contender that has one obvious hole: the leadoff spot he vacated in May has been a black hole ever since, with the rotating cast of replacements batting a combined .215 with a .367 slugging percentage. Chad Tracy has already said Anthony will get first crack at reclaiming that job, splitting time between left field and designated hitter as he works back into game shape.
Not everyone thinks leadoff is the right call right away — some of the smarter Boston analysis has pointed out that Anthony himself hit just .214 in his own 22-game leadoff trial earlier this year, and that he might do more damage sliding into the middle of an order that’s already rolling. That’s a fair caution, and a three-and-a-half-month layoff is nothing to wave off. Rust is real, and a handful of rehab games in Portland won’t fully replicate big-league velocity.
But even with all that hedging, it’s hard not to like where this is heading. A team that’s 12 games over .500 and playoff-bound is about to get a talent infusion most contenders would kill for — a former No. 1 prospect who was hit for a .920 OPS in a World Baseball Classic final four just six months ago. Even a modestly-productive version of Roman Anthony raises Boston’s ceiling. A version anywhere close to his 2025 form or his WBC form makes an already dangerous roster look like a legitimate October threat.
The Red Sox didn’t need saving. But now they need a finishing touch. Roman Anthony, healthy or not quite yet, is about as good a finishing touch as a farm system can produce — and he’s finally back on a field to prove it.
