Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Boston Red Sox. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the sixth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.
A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.
All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here.
Other Prospects of Note
Grouped by type and listed in order of preference within each category.
Bench Bats
Isaiah Jackson, OF
Braiden Ward, OF
Freili Encarnacion, INF
Tsung-Che Cheng, INF
Josue Brito, 1B
Jhoan Peguero, OF
Tavano Baker, LF
Jackson was the Angels’ eighth-rounder last year and came to Boston in exchange for Vaughn Grissom. He has big league physicality but lacks a carrying tool. His 70% contact rate at High-A thus far is manageable but concerning for a corner bat without big power. Ward is among the very fastest players in pro baseball, and his game-changing speed gives him a chance to impact a contender’s roster à la Terrence Gore. Encarnacion is a twitchy athlete with a big swing and at least plus raw. It’s a long, sweeping swing, though, and he has an immature approach. Defensively, he has a plus arm but is starting to see a lot of time at first base. This isn’t a high-probability prospect, but the tools make him a guy you can’t push off the radar entirely.
Cheng is a Taiwanese middle infielder, one of several signees from Pittsburgh’s robust East Asian scouting group to reach the majors. He has very little pop and the bat looks light for regular utility work, but he can fill in at three spots on the infield and put a competitive at-bat together in a pinch. Brito had an incredible second DSL season, during which he slugged .606 and posted a 49% hard-hit rate. He’s a squat first baseman whose game is about contact consistency rather than actual high-end power. Peguero is a super skinny, toolsy, long-levered FCL outfield prospect who K’d at a 37% clip last year, but that has come way down (18.8%) as he repeats the level. Baker, 19, is a hard-swinging Bahamian outfielder (and eventually maybe a first baseman) who has struggled to manifest his raw power in games.
Reliever Monster
Barrett Morgan, RHP
Christian Foutch, RHP
Cooper Adams, RHP
Matt McShane, RHP
Jacob Mayers, RHP
Madinson Frias, RHP
Brady Tygart, RHP
Jeremy Wu-Yelland, LHP
Cole Tolbert, RHP
Morgan was a priority 11th-rounder ($500,000 bonus) out of a Kansas community college. He’s an enormous, slow-twitch athlete with a vertical attack. He’s been sitting in the 93-95 mph range in starts this year, and has a couple paths to a mid-leverage relief role. At his best in college, Foutch touched the upper 90s with spotty command of a plus fastball/split mix. His stuff is down five ticks with Salem right now, and he also isn’t throwing strikes, so we’re tucking him down here for now until we learn more about what’s going on. Adams is up to 98 with a flat angle and good spin on a sweeping slider. His feel for location isn’t good, thanks in part to a big head whack. McShane has an above-average fastball thanks to his extension and high release; he has just a fair breaking ball to go with it.
Mayers was the club’s ninth-rounder out of LSU last year. He’s tall with an overhand slot, and he can run his heater to the upper 90s. He isn’t a great athlete, however, and his power slider is surviving on velo rather than break. It’s worth monitoring the arm strength and control as he eventually transitions into a relief role. Frias is an athletic righty with arm speed and a projectable slider. His velo is down a little this year at Low-A, where he’s been hit hard. Tygart, a 2024 12th-rounder out of Arkansas, is an oft-injured righty. He got hurt again (shoulder) in his first 2025 start. He was up to 96 in that outing and bending in two distinct breakers with 2,700-2,800 rpm, but he’s barely thrown since. Wu-Yelland is a low-slot lefty with a chance for a couple of above-average pitches. The Sox have had to manage his workload carefully and he hasn’t thrown yet this season. Tolbert is a deep sleeper, a former late-rounder just back from Tommy John. He has big league size and could be a 95-and-a-slider guy in short stints.
Spot Starters
Dylan Brown, LHP
Dalvinson Reyes, RHP
Jack Anderson, RHP
Myles Patton, LHP
Yermain Ruiz, RHP
Brown was Boston’s eighth-rounder last year. He’s well built, with good control and command of fringy stuff. He looks like a spot starter. Reyes is a good athlete with size, a gorgeous arm action, and the outline of a starter’s pitch mix. He’s mostly sitting in the low 90s now, and is a candidate for the main section if he can build arm strength. Anderson debuted with the big club earlier this year. He’s an athletic righty with an overhand slot, a loose and clean arm swing, and a couple optimized breaking ball shapes. He sits either side of 90, and a lack of arm strength likely limits him to a depth role. Patton is a soft-tossing lefty who throws strikes with mostly fringy secondaries. You can often find stuff like this in a Triple-A rotation. Ruiz is a complex-level starter with advanced pitchability. He only sits 91-93, but he commands it to locations where it stays out of trouble, and he mixes in sliders/cutters and changeups that diverge horizontally just before they reach the plate, crossing the eyes of the young hitters who struggle to cover both of them. He’s small (5-foot-11) and lacks projection, but he’s a good athlete and looks like a potential starter, albeit a very backend type.
Catchers
Luke Heyman, C
Ronny Hernandez, C
Adonys Guzman, C
Johanfran Garcia, C
Franklin Primera, C
Kleyver Salazar, C
Andruw Musett, C
Heyman has power and an idea at the plate. He has a steep swing, and he crouches low looking to get under a pitch and launch it. Fringy pitch recognition and plate coverage threatens the whole enterprise, and while he has a strong arm, he’s otherwise a below-average defensive catcher. Hernandez does a few things very well: He makes a ton of contact, he tracks pitches beautifully, and he has a great approach. He also has soft hands and blocks well. Still, the things he doesn’t do well (hit for power and, especially, throw) are problematic enough to keep him down here for now. Guzman has a little pop but also a long, steep swing and corresponding vulnerability upstairs. His arm strength is playing down due to a long release and scattered throws.
Garcia, younger brother of Jhostynxon, is a catcher with power and arm strength. A steep swing lets him bring that pop into games, but it comes with a ton of swing and miss. His receiving, throwing accuracy, and approach are all well below par, but he’s young and has a chance to grow into a backup role on tools. Primera is a husky rookie ball catcher who has posted single digit strikeout rates so far as a pro. He has well below-average bat speed. Salazar is a good defensive prospect with no bat. Musett is a 20-year-old Venezuelan catcher with a great-looking swing that hasn’t produced in-game power for a few years now. He allows too many steals to be considered a lock to catch.
Short, High-Octane Complex Arms
Williams Montero, RHP
Jeison Payano, RHP
Juanyerlin Duran, RHP
Angelo Ladera, RHP
Yoandys Veraza, RHP
Christopher Cordero, RHP
Montero, 18, leads off this group because he’s the most athletic of the bunch, and even though he’s a little guy with a high-effort delivery, he’s thrown strikes so far as a pro. His high-spin sinker sits 93-96 with uphill angle thanks to his lack of size and lower arm slot. He can also create big action on a changeup and has a fringy low-spin slider. Payano is a 20-year-old righty whose low-90s fastball has big vertical life. His downer slider lacks spin but tunnels well off the heater. Duran and Ladera are smaller teenage relief prospects in Fort Myers whose fastballs are sitting 93-96 in early FCL play. They’re both deep relief prospects. Veraza, 19, is even more volatile and has 47 walks in 50.2 career innings. He made his first FCL appearance days before publication and sat 95-98, but he also didn’t record an out. Cordero is the youngest pitcher on Boston’s FCL roster and won’t turn 18 until July. He’s a low-release dev project sitting about 90.
System Overview
Wasn’t that fun? Needless to say, Boston has assembled one of the best farm systems in the game. Offseason Top 100 prospects Connelly Early and Payton Tolle have graduated and been backfilled by Anthony Eyanson, Juan Valera, and Dorian Soto, and we had serious discussions about elevating Enddy Azocar into similar territory. Reasonable people could argue that Justin Gonzales, Kyson Witherspoon, and Marcus Phillips belong in that space as well, or at least that they will soon.
We need to start treating the Red Sox as one of the premier pitching development groups in the sport. The work they’ve done with Tolle and Early needs no further explanation, and the breakouts from Eyanson and Valera further solidify the impression that this org knows what it’s doing. This isn’t a one trick pony system just drafting arm strength or trying to give everyone a sweeper. They’re succeeding with different flavors of pitchers and are able to help guys implement a variety of tweaks. Late-round picks (Tyler Uberstine, Jojo Ingrassia, Hayden Mullins, etc.) and small-dollar signees (Azocar, Angel Bastardo, etc.) are all over this list, a reliable sign of a healthy system.
All layers of the pipeline are humming. The amateur groups are finding athletes, strike-throwers, breaking ball specialists, and guys who throw hard. The pro staff has a knack for targeting interesting traits, and seems to have a particular fondness for extension and unusual release points. All of these arms are then fed into a development program that has started to accumulate quite a few feathers in its collective cap. This is a group that can coax more velo out of Eyanson, help Tolle find a better cutter, get Blake Wehunt meaningfully stronger, and adjust Gage Ziehl’s slot. It’s impressive.
Another thing that stands out with this pitching group is that the coaches seem capable of helping guys improve their stuff or deception without sacrificing (and in some cases augmenting) their feel for the strike zone. There are some systems that can’t develop pitching at all, and plenty of others that can goose a guy’s Stuff+, but at the considerable expense of a max-effort style that increases injury risk and treats the strike zone as an inconvenience of tertiary importance. That’s not the situation here. Sometimes the arms Boston acquires are already elite strike-throwers (Jake Bennett, Ziehl, John Holobetz) and sometimes they aren’t, but the org seems to value control and command and can help pitchers develop it. It’s the kind of thing that makes us think twice about dismissing, say, Alec Gamboa’s unusually low walk rate as an early-season coincidence.
The hitting side is doing pretty well for itself too. Franklin Arias’ development into one of the game’s premier prospects has been a pleasant surprise, as we both thought he was more of a high-floor player than a potential star. Sometimes it’s nice to be wrong. Boston has a mix of great athletes, toolsheds, and spreadsheet standouts sprinkled throughout the farm. Their run of international signings from late 2024 to early 2025 looks great, as there’s a raft of talent in Fort Myers right now. Even some of the guys with skill sets that don’t generally light us up — this system is well-stocked with statistical performers who have questionable swings and/or limited physical projection — are good versions of the type.
We are a little skeptical of some of these power breakouts, though. The lower levels of the minors are in the midst of a (seemingly ball-driven) power surge, and several of the leagues Boston’s farmhands play in have seen their home run rates increase nearly 100% year over year. Keep that in mind when Yophery Rodriguez blasts his 25th homer later this summer, and don’t forget to extend a little grace to pitchers who see their ERAs spike following a visit to Asheville or Hartford.
The vibe around Boston’s thriving system feels entirely different than the two-year soap opera the big league club has endured. Rafael Devers’ tenure ended in ugly fashion and the situation was made worse by later trading James Tibbs III for a rental. Kyle Harrison got better elsewhere. We suppose it’s possible that the players’ discontent, which surfaced after Alex Cora’s dismissal, and the communication shortcoming from leadership that seem to have caused it, could extend beyond just the big league roster. Things haven’t gone perfectly, but the parts of the organizational machinery we’re focused on here appear well-lubricated. From a talent perspective, help is on the way.