On June 8, 2025, the Boston Red Sox beat the New York Yankees to move to 32-35. They were still looking for a spark and called up baseball’s top prospect: Roman Anthony. While there were some ups and downs the rest of the year, the Red Sox went 57-38 following Anthony's promotion.
That’s not happening this year. The Red Sox don’t have any internal help coming, and they need to accept that.
As of June 17, Boston is 12 games under .500. It's just two games ahead of the Kansas City Royals for the worst record in the American League and its 29 wins are tied for the second-least in MLB.
Who can come help? In Triple-A, the Red Sox have a lot of veterans who haven’t cut it in the majors, a handful of career minor leaguers, and then you can throw in Mikey Romero and Kristian Campbell.
The Red Sox have no in-house help coming to save them in 2026
Campbell has been struggling mightily. My concern levels aren’t crazy high; the Red Sox messed with his swing a lot. However, he’s clearly not someone who’s going to help the major league team right now.
Romero’s starting to heat up. He's a legit hitter, and once we get into the dog days of summer, balls are going to fly off his bat. Romero’s another lefty and the Red Sox don’t need that right now. He’s also a third baseman/second baseman, and at the moment, those positions aren’t complete washes for the Red Sox (Caleb Durbin and Marcelo Mayer have both been great defensively and have looked better at the plate).
If you go down to Double-A, there’s the obvious shout to Franklin Arias. You could maybe even get crazy and throw out Brooks Brannon or Johanfran Garcia. Neither Brannon nor Garcia will be called up any time soon, though: Brannon is a first baseman, and Willson Contreras has been phenomenal. Meanwhile, Garcia is a catcher, and the Red Sox already have too many of them (even if they haven’t been great).
So, let’s get back to Arias. The Red Sox have gotten aggressive with promotions of top prospects before. Xander Bogaerts and Rafael Devers are great shouts when it comes to this. However, Boston was in a much different situation.
Bogaerts made his MLB debut on August 20, 2013. The Red Sox were 74-54 at the time. They were tied for first in the AL East and would go on to win the World Series. Devers made his MLB debut on July 25, 2017. The Red Sox were 55-46 at the time, which put them atop the AL East.
Boston will not be, and SHOULD not be aggressive with an Arias promotion to the majors in what is most likely a lost season. The Red Sox don’t have in-house help coming. No top prospects are close enough to the big leagues who make sense for this team at the moment.
It feels pessimistic to say, but it’s time for the Red Sox to look inward and realize that 2026 is not their year. Help isn’t coming from within the organization, and trading for it feels like a fruitless effort with the hole they’ve dug. There are still plenty of reasons to be excited about the future, but ownership needs to start making some changes to protect it.
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