Red Sox's Roman Anthony Gets New Promotion Projection After Marcelo Mayer Debut

As the Boston Red Sox hover around .500, calls for top prospect Roman Anthony to be promoted are growing into shouts.

Anthony, the consensus number-one prospect in all of baseball, looks like he's wasting his time in Triple-A at this point. He's batting .321 with a .453 on-base percentage through 47 games, and his stats were nearly identical when he first got called up to Triple-A last August.

On Saturday, the same day close friend and fellow top prospect Marcelo Mayer got the call up to Boston, Anthony blasted a 116-mile-per-hour home run to right field. And in their next two games, the Red Sox combined for two runs against the pitiful Baltimore Orioles' pitching staff.

With Alex Bregman injured, Red Sox fans are dying for offense, and to many, calling up Anthony seems like the obvious solution. But those fans might have to wait a while longer if one prospect evaluator's intuition proves correct.

On Sunday, MLB Pipeline reporter Sam Dykstra projected the promotion timelines for several top prospects, and his theory for Anthony was that unless someone gets injured (specifically, an outfielder or designated hitter Rafael Devers), the 21-year-old might be stuck in Triple-A a while longer.

"As much as the Red Sox would like to break beyond a .500 record, their outfield group isn’t the biggest problem right now. Jarren Duran (LF), Ceddanne Rafaela (CF) and Wilyer Abreu (RF) are pretty locked in, especially as Rafaela has shown offensive improvements to go with his Gold Glove-quality defense," Dykstra wrote.

"On merit, it could come at any time. Triple-A pitchers aren’t giving Anthony much to hit, and he’s willing to take the free passes given to him instead of pressing. In reality, it might take an injury to one of the outfield mainstays or DH Rafael Devers to open up a lane for Anthony. And no, don’t expect him to play first base either."

Dykstra, in this author's opinion, is a little too bullish on Rafaela's offense. He's got a .602 OPS after following an early-May hot stretch with a 1-for-22 spurt. And though he's hitting the ball harder than last year, a lot of that hard contact is to right-center, where he doesn't have the pop to hit home runs.

At some point, the Red Sox are going to have to rip the Band-Aid off by shifting Rafaela to a utility role and calling Anthony up. They might as well get it over with, because the offense isn't suddenly going to fix itself.