In wake of massive Devers trade, 'Roman Empire' just beginning

You have to say the Red Sox have had good luck with hot kids over the last decade or so. Xander Bogaerts showed up in the big leagues at age 20 in 2013, got big hits in the ALCS and World Series that year and helped the Sox win it all.

Mookie Betts, one of the truly great all-around players of his time, showed up the next year at Fenway Park. He was 21. He became an MVP in 2018 and the Red Sox were champs again that year, with arguably the greatest Sox team of all time. Mookie’s teammate on that ’18 team, Rafael Devers, had shown up at Fenway the year before, at age 20.

Betts and Devers were eventually traded away. Bogaerts left for the Padres in free agency. It doesn’t change that when they were hot kids in Boston, they were something to see. And the Red Sox won with all of them.

Now here comes Roman Anthony. He’s not the only kid to watch right now with the Red Sox as they’re trying to become a team to watch in what is becoming a very interesting American League East. Kristian Campbell started the season hot for the Sox before slumping and being sent down to Triple-A Worcester. Marcelo Mayer, now playing third for the Sox, was the fourth overall pick in the 2021 Draft.

But it was Anthony who quickly came to be regarded as the game’s No. 1 prospect after being drafted by the Red Sox in the second round of the ’22 Draft. This year he was tearing things up in Worcester before being called up in June, having already hit a 497-foot grand slam against Rochester. And then maybe it was symbolic that Anthony hit his first big league home run the day after Devers being traded to the Giants had rocked Red Sox Nation.

Now he is starting to pick up the pace as the Red Sox try to do the same thing chasing the Blue Jays, Yankees and Rays, very much hanging around after a lot of bad things have happened to them across the first half of the season. Anthony got two more hits on Friday against the Nationals, in a game the Sox won 11-2 and moved to within a game of .500. Over the last week, Anthony has 10 hits in 26 at-bats.

Is he still trying to figure things out, even though his arrival at Fenway was likely ahead of the timetable the team had for him? He is. Is he going to be a star? Yeah, he is.

Here’s something an old Red Sox World Series champ, Kevin Millar, said on MLB Network after the team finally told Anthony that his time in Worcester was over: “I smell greatness. This isn’t a fake No. 1 prospect. I’m looking at a kid that hits balls 500 feet and he’s kind of sneaky hot. I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know if there’s anything sneaky about him, but this young man is going to have a great career.”

This isn’t to say that Anthony is going to have anything like the career that Betts has had in Boston and with the Dodgers. Or that he is going to become the kind of hitter that Devers became, or become a four-time All-Star and two-time World Series winner the way Bogaerts was for the Red Sox. It has only been a month. After Friday’s game, the batting average was still just .219. But he is getting better in front of our eyes, and fast. Along with Mayer, he is helping the Red Sox turn the page in the shadow of the Devers deal.

Both of them are young and new and exciting. Now everybody will see if both these kids can help make the Red Sox the second-half story they very much want to be in the AL East, even with Devers having taken his talents – and even a first-base mitt! – to San Francisco.

And by the way? The Red Sox also have a 24-year-old center fielder, Ceddanne Rafaela, who’s also started to heat up over the past month and continues to be a streak of light in center field.

Devers hit his first home run for the Red Sox, age 20, back in 2017. Anthony hit his first home run in Seattle and, in the process, became the youngest Sox player to hit a home run since Devers. You know what the Red Sox needed after the Devers trade truly did rock everybody’s world in Boston? Anthony to do something like that, and start to hit the way he has lately.

Here is what Sox manager Alex Cora said in Seattle at the time:

“This is who we are. We’re going to use the kids. They’re going to play.”

There’s a lot of baseball left to be played. A long way to go, for Anthony and the Sox. Coming out of the All-Star break, the Red Sox get three games on the road against the Cubs, three in Philly and come home to play the Dodgers. But for now, there is at least hope they can have a season. Roman Anthony, the new hot kid in Boston, brought that with him from Worcester.