After rocketing to Majors in '25, Tolle is ready to take next step

The arrival of Payton Tolle to Fenway Park a mere 13 months after he was drafted felt unusually sudden, but also welcome to a fanbase that salivates over prospects.

As the Red Sox tried to improve their postseason positioning in 2025, pitching injuries were piling up. The club’s player development team reviewed all eligible call-ups and decided that Tolle – inexperience aside – was the best choice to start the night of Aug. 29 against the Pirates. Pittsburgh, incidentally, was starting some guy named Paul Skenes that night.

Perhaps it was a way for the Red Sox to get an instant look at how Tolle would handle being thrust into the spotlight so quickly.

The results spoke for themselves: 5 1/3 innings, three hits, two runs, eight strikeouts. Both runs scored after Tolle was removed from the game. The ovation from the Friday night crowd at Fenway was enormous.

The performance itself was a tease in a way.

Tolle wasn’t ready to contribute like that consistently, as he proved in two subsequent starts that weren’t nearly as lengthy or productive. But there were other flashes of brilliance, such as when he struck out four over three innings in his first relief appearance, including one heater that registered at 100 mph on the Fenway Park scoreboard.

Tolle’s brief body of work provides plenty of intrigue for just how big a role the team’s No. 2 prospect per MLB Pipeline can play for the 2026 Red Sox, and in what capacity.

And he has a chance this offseason to establish what kind of role he can play in the coming year.

“This offseason will be essential for him developmentally,” said Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow. “There is no secret he put on quite a bit of velocity last offseason, and there will be a focus this offseason on developing some of those secondaries. So, we’ll see what that looks like when we get to Spring Training.”

In his second Major League start in Arizona, the D-backs hunted his secondary stuff and Tolle got exposed, giving up five hits, five runs and two homers in three innings.

However, it was hardly a red flag for a pitcher with just 91 2/3 innings of experience in the Minors.

As a reliever, Tolle is probably already in position to succeed, just based on the 195 four-seamers he threw in his initiation to the Majors that averaged 96.7 mph. His cutter projects as a nice secondary offering.

But the 6-foot-6, 250-pound Tolle would provide the most value to Boston – or any club – if he can be an effective starting pitcher.

If that is going to happen with the Red Sox in 2026, it will be due to the physical and mechanical gains he makes.

In Breslow’s two-plus years leading the team’s baseball operations department, few things have been valued as much as drafting and developing.

Tolle has a chance to be a big success story for the evolving regime.

“We have been monitoring his work pretty closely, but there is nothing like stress-testing this in games against hitters,” said Breslow. “I think ultimately with a bunch of these young pitchers it’s going to be the case of when they get to Spring Training, performance is going to dictate where they end up.”