The Boston Red Sox have built one of the deepest pitching pipelines in baseball, and that depth gives Craig Breslow some real leverage at the August 3 deadline. Boston has reportedly been looking to add a right-handed bat — but before they spend elite prospect capital to find one, let's talk about their assets.
Baseball America's midseason update had the Red Sox jumping into the top 10 farm systems in baseball, checking in at No. 9 overall after entering the year at No. 15. The reason is no secret: pitching.
While the system has a top 100 prospect in Franklin Arias and insane young prospects like Justin Gonzales and injured pitcher Juan Valera, the documented strength is its more major league-ready, high-ceiling arms, headlined by Anthony Eyanson, with Kyson Witherspoon, Marcus Phillips, Jake Bennett (already debuted with Boston) and a deep developmental queue right behind them.
The documented weakness, per the same BA update, is pure hitting — after Arias, the Red Sox lack true high-end position player bats. It's worth noting that Boston just drafted three position players with their top three picks in this week's MLB Draft, so that pipeline is likely already being addressed. But at the deadline, it's the pitching depth that gets you an impact bat — and that's where the packages start getting built.
Red Sox have plenty of top young pitching talent to trade for a righty bat before the deadline
Eyanson was a third-round pick out of LSU in 2025, and the Red Sox's pitching lab immediately got to work. His fastball climbed from touching 97 in college to living at 97-99 and touching 100 mph in professional ball, with a mid-80s slider that may be an even more dangerous pitch. He's posted a 1.07 ERA with a 34% strikeout rate between High-A and Double-A, pitched in the Futures Game, and jumped from unranked at the start of the year to No. 33 in BA's July top 100.
Witherspoon and Marcus Phillips are cut from the same 2025 first-round cloth — both power right-handers with upper-90s stuff and power secondaries still developing. Witherspoon has had a more volatile year individually, ranking No. 94 in BA's top 100 with refinement still needed on his secondary offerings, but the raw arm out of Oklahoma is undeniable. He's a mid-to-upper rotation ceiling if the command sharpens — a selling team takes that and bets on their own development to unlock the rest.
Phillips completes the first-round duo — Boston's 33rd overall pick in 2025 out of Tennessee, a 6'4'', 245-pound power righty with a fastball that touches 101 and a high-spin slider. He could end up as a reliever, and his 2026 debut has been inconsistent as he finds his footing in pro ball. But the stuff and the pedigree are real.
Together, Eyanson, Witherspoon, Phillips and Bennett represent four legitimate centerpiece names — any one of them, maybe even paired with a prospect from the 11-to-30 range to sweeten the deal, is the kind of offer that gets a selling team's attention on a quality right-handed bat. But before Breslow makes that call, there's a question worth asking.
What if Boston already has the answer? On July 14, the Red Sox quietly acquired Jahmai Jones from the Detroit Tigers for a player to be named later. This year hasn't gone the way Jones has hoped — the .137 average and .440 OPS before the move, is a steep fall from the .287/.387/.550 line and .937 OPS he posted for Detroit's playoff squad in 2025 where he was a clubhouse favorite.
But look at his numbers at Fenway Park specifically, because they tell a different story. It's a small sample size, sure — but in his seven career games there, Jones is hitting .500 with seven hits, a home run, six RBIs and two runs scored. He clearly sees the ball well at Fenway and some ballparks just fit certain hitters — the dimensions, the backdrop, the atmosphere. When a right-handed hitter with Jones' track record against left-handed pitching has that kind of history at your home park, the team is red-hot and the fans looking for feel-good stories, you give him a look. Before Breslowspends one of his best young arms on a right-handed bat, it might be worth finding out whether the answer already walked through the door, at least for a few weeks.
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