Ranking the MLB readiness of the Red Sox top 5 prospects
None of the top five prospects are major league ready; looks like Boston will not be getting any younger in 2024.
Baseball America's top five prospects in the Boston Red Sox organization do not appear to be major league ready. Further, I believe that they got the top five wrong.
Marcelo Mayer, shortstop
Marcelo Mayer, who has been working at shortstop, is not ready for the major leagues and will probably start the season at Double-A Portland. There is no chance that he sniffs the major leagues this season, other than being on the Red Sox spring training roster. He won't be there long before he is reassigned to minor-league camp.
Mayer is coming off of a left shoulder injury that saw him miss the last month of the season in Portland. Mayer worked out in the offseason and his left shoulder was rehabilitated in Fort Myers, but the inflammation had been bothering him all season. That could be a major reason why he only slashed .189/.254/.355 after his promotion from High-A Greenville.
Marcelo Mayer on his shoulder: “It’s ready to go.”
— Gabrielle Starr (@gfstarr1) January 17, 2024
Says “I should’ve said something earlier” regarding the shoulder not feeling 100% last year.
The former first-round pick of the Sox in the 2021 Major League Baseball Amateur Draft has risen to the top of the Red Sox prospects, according to BA, but it appears as though they are the only ones that are in love with the current Sea Dog. BA has him ranked as the 17th best product in MLB, but none of the other periodicals or rating systems has him rated that high. In all fairness, we should judge Mayer when he is at his best physically, and not based upon what he was like when he was injured.
“It’s tough. I mean, everybody wants to be on the field,” he said last week of his 2023 season. “Everybody wants to play. This is what we do, this is what we love. So when something happens and you get hurt, it does suck. But it’s part of the game and I think you learn and grow from injuries. So I think I’ve learned a lot from this last season.”
Despite BA's ranking, Mayer is not even the prospect who has the best chance of making an impact in the Red Sox organization. That designation belongs to outfielder Ceddanne Rafaela, who BA ranks fourth, but I have at first on my analysis of Boston's prospects.
The shortstop knew that 2023 was not a banner year for him, despite the injury. He was not that good before the injury either. He is still young and has plenty of baseball ahead of him, but even he acknowledges that the season was not what he expected.
“At the end of the day — my shoulder was hurting a little bit,” Mayer said. “But that’s no excuse, I think. I should have said something earlier and the product that I put on the field is the product that people are gonna see. Obviously, that wasn’t the best product, but I’m looking to put that in the past and just get ready for this.”
Mayer will more than likely return to Portland to start the season, but for some reason is still on the fast track to the major leagues, according to BA. However, with the left shoulder injury that he is rehabilitating and the fact that he is finally fit enough to play ball again, I see the Red Sox taking it slow with Mayer and not pushing him that hard. It might be 2025 or 2026 before he becomes a regular at Fenway Park.
Ceddanne Rafaela, outfield
Rafaela played in the majors last season, as he made 28 appearances for the Red Sox after being called up from Triple-A Worcester. It looks like he will be reassigned to the minor-league camp after stinting in spring training with the big league club in Fort Myers.
MLB.com has Rafaela listed as the 86th best prospect in the game, and I think that it unfair to Rafaela. BA has him ranked as the fourth-best prospect in the organization, and I also that it is inaccurate. Rafaela is probably the most seasoned and polished player in the Red Sox organization and shows the most promise for immediate success.
He finished the year at the big league level once the rosters expanded, and with the Red Sox gunning for a youth movement, he might be making a return quickly, though he strikes out more than the scouts would like and he still needs to work on his plate discipline.
On Saturday night, Red Sox skipper Alex Cora said that they will give Rafaela every opportunity to win the job in center field during spring training.
“As of now, we're going to give him all the chances to get repetitions in the center field. He needs them, too, at this level. Just play him out there as much as possible, with his gray pants most of the time. Should be fun playing him,” Cora said.
Ceddanne Rafaela will pretty much be taking every bus ride to play center field. "As of now, we’re going to give him all the chances to get repetitions in center field. He needs them, too, at this level. Just play him out there as much as possible, with his gray pants most of the…
— Ian Browne (@IanMBrowne) February 24, 2024
Rafaela appeared in 28 games for the Red Sox last season and batted .241 with 11 RBI and two round-trippers. He only played 48 games for Worcester before being called up and could use some more seasoning, but it appears though Cora is going to allow him to thrive under the on-the-job training method.
He is also no youngster. He has been in the Red Sox organization since starting in the Dominican Summer League in 2018 out of Curacao. He spent a lot of time in the bus leagues before earning his ticket to the show in 2023. With the endorsement of Cora on Saturday night, it might be hard to get him out of the lineup if he progresses during spring training and Cora keeps his word.
Roman Anthony, outfield
CBS Sports has Anthony at number 17 in their latest top 25 list of all major league prospects. CBS Sports also ranks Anthony as the top prospect in the Red Sox organization, despite the fact that he has not made it past Double-A Portland. I have him ranked third in the organization, behind Rafaela and Mayer.
Anthony is a competitor and is a left-handed batter, which is a commodity today in baseball. He hit nine of his 14 home runs to either left or left-center fields and shows an impressive display of opposite field power. This was done at the tender age of 19 and, while he does show signs of absurd promise, he still has too much to prove to be the organization's No. 1 prospect.
“At the beginning of the year, I was pulling it on the ground a little more than I would like to,” acknowledged Anthony, who was 200-plus plate appearances into the season when he went yard for a second time. “But I worked with my hitting coaches and eventually it clicked. It was really just minor tweaks. It’s not as though I was redoing my swing, or anything like that. I still have pretty much the same swing I’ve always had.”
Anthony does not strike out much for a player with so much power at the plate. He keeps his strikeout rate under 20 percent in the minor leagues, and seemed to get better with making contact as he grew in the system.
Kyle Teel, catcher
Teel is a tad bit older than most of your prospects, as he will be 22 during spring training. However, he shows tremendous power behind the plate, and the Red Sox would like to see him fast tracked to the major leagues. There are rumors that he could be a late-season call up in 2024, but I do not see him as a major leaguer until 2025, barring injuries to the Red Sox big-league receivers.
The former Virginia Cavalier is readying himself for his first major league spring training, and has been crowned as the Red Sox catcher of the future. He was the 14th pick overall in the 2023 MLB Amateur Draft and was the reigning ACC Player of the Year and a consensus All American.
“Obviously I want to make it up as fast as I can. And that’s my goal. But just controlling what I can and giving it my all every day and working hard is what’s really important to me.”
Teel's greatest attributes are the fact that he has a high contact rate and is very solid behind the plate. His time at Virginia was well spent and he probably developed more against ACC competition than he could have in the lower rungs of the bus leagues. He combined for only 26 games last season in the minors and hit a pair of bombs while batting .363 collectively.
Teel skipped Low-A Salem and landed with High-A Greenville after only three games in rookie ball in Florida. It only took him 14 games to earn yet another call-up — ending his abbreviated 2023 campaign with Double-A Portland, where he played with other prospects like Mayer and Anthony.
“[He’s] unique in the sense that we don’t have too many rookies in the rookie program that haven’t had a spring training,” Farm Director Brian Abraham said of Teel. “So I think getting him acclimated to Fort Myers and we joked a little bit — he’s probably going to come to Fort Myers and [say] ‘Wow, we have a lot of players,’ because he’s only been around about 60 or 70 at one time.
The 21-year-old Teel was impressive in his first pro season, batting .363/.483/.495, but he'll likely need to garner much more real experience and prove himself at Triple-A Worcester before reaching Boston's major league roster, like I said, barring injury to the Red Sox catchers at the big league level.
Miguel Bleis, outfield
Outside of the top four prospects, you could probably insert any of the top 15 prospects for the Red Sox and say that they have an equal opportunity to make the majors in 2024. All of them need more seasoning before you can really tell how far along they have come. Bleis missed most of the 2023 campaign with a severe shoulder injury, so you really could not get a good gauge of his game.
I have chosen the number five prospect according to BA to analyze, but I do not necessarily subscribe to that assertion, as I do not see how Bleis, who only spent one year in the organization and spent it at Single A-Salem, batting .230 in 31 games, separated himself from the pack.
While naming him at the fifth-best product in the organization, BA says that Bleis "carries a significant amount of bust risk in his profile, but also a ceiling unrivaled in the system."
What kind of analysis of that? He can either go boom or bust, we have not determined yet? That just shows that there really is no separation between Bleis and the rest of the minor leaguers. I have seen Bleis footage and he looks steady in the field, but is nothing special at the plate. I wonder how BA came up with their assessment of him as the fifth-best product, especially after the quote that they gave about him going boom or bust.