Cutter Coffey was the second-round selection of the Boston Red Sox in the 2022 MLB Draft. It's easy to overlook him. He wasn't the first-round pick (Mikey Romero), and the pick after him was Roman Anthony (who has emerged as one of the top prospects in all of baseball).
Coffey was intriguing, though. He had raw power and graded decent at-worst in all the other tools. The 2023 season was a strange one. Coffey had some good and bad months in Single-A. It would be great to get him out of Salem and see what he could do at a ballpark that didn't feast on the souls of hitters.
Coffey got 18 games in High-A to end the year but struggled to get things going. Still, it felt like he was getting his feet wet at the level.
Then came the start of 2024, and it was already laboring. Coffey was getting some absurdly bad luck rivaled only by Blaze Jordan at Double-A. Coffey getting robbed of a hit was a daily tradition in April. Then, an injury forced him to miss nearly the entire month of May, just as he was showing signs of life.
It was beginning to feel like Coffey was cursed. Heading into June 9, the right-handed hitting infielder held a .186/.260/.331 slash line. The rallying cry of his believers was pointing to bad luck, good-quality ABs, and his age (he turned 20 on May 21).
What came next would make prime Barry Bonds blush. Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire in that 1998 HR race could never. Cutter Coffey hit a home run on June 9 (in a game he went 3-for-5). Greenville's next game was June 11, and he went 2-for-5 with another homer.
Cutter Coffey breaks a Boston Red Sox High-A home run record
On June 12, Coffey went 2-for-4 with a home run. Then on June 13, he went 1-for-2 with a home run (and three walks).
Can you guess what he did on June 14? If you guessed he hit a homer, you'd be wrong. Coffey didn't hit a homer. He hit two homers (a grand slam and a three-run shot). That was now five consecutive games with a home run, breaking the Greenville Drive record.
On June 15, Coffey extended the record to six games by going 1-for-5 with a homer.
The streak ended on June 18, when the California native went 2-for-4 with two singles (extending his hitting streak to seven games).
Remember that slash line before the home run streak? It now sits at .240/.317/.507. He has 11 home runs in 146 ABs (five more than he had in 362 ABs last season) and 33 RBI (two fewer than he had all of last year). Coffey's arrived.
We've seen flashes of the brilliant potential from Coffey in the past. However, the Red Sox have such a ridiculously stacked farm system that even during those hot streaks, he often remained overlooked.
Breaking records is a way to get everyone's attention, though. Coffey made it so he had to be talked about. Marcelo Mayer's still doing great things, as are Roman Anthony and Kyle Teel. Nick Yorke's caught fire in Triple-A. Miguel Bleis has made it to High-A. Jedixson Paez has an unreal K/BB ratio.
But are you seeing what Cutter Coffey's doing?