What Red Sox Want To See In Roman Anthony’s Development

Roman Anthony picked up where he left off last season, and Boston Red Sox fans eagerly await his call-up to the big league club.

Anthony hit two home runs and recorded seven RBIs off a .941 OPS in 13 games at Triple-A Worcester this season. Boston’s consensus No. 1 prospect is willing to stay patient and understands the club will do its best for his development.

Senior director of player development Brian Abraham offered more details of that process to The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier and NESN Red Sox analyst Will Middlebrooks on the latest “310 To Left” podcast. While Anthony’s numbers were impressive in Triple-A, Middlebrooks brought up how it’s important to see how young players deal with adversity as part of the evaluation. It’s a quality Boston tries to work prospects like Anthony through.

“You don’t necessarily want guys to fail because you want guys to have success, but like you said Will, if there’s a little bit of a blip in the radar or maybe there’s a stretch where a guy is struggling a little bit, allowing that player to trust the process, trust the training is really important because it’s going to happen in the major leagues,” Abraham said. “I don’t think there is a major leaguer, Hall of Fame or not, that hasn’t struggled at one point in their career and they’ve been able to bounce back out of that. Sometimes shorter than others but there have also been players who’ve struggled for a long time. They have to make adjustments or changes, or quite frankly, stay the course and trust that the work they’ve been putting in is going to allow them to get the success that they want.”

Abraham also noted that they try to help players become good “problem-solvers,” a quality they need to become great major leaguers.

Anthony showed his commitment to becoming the best player he can be to help out the Red Sox, and it seems like it’s a matter of when, not if, he’ll get a call-up this season if he continues on the trajectory he’s projected for.

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