FORT MYERS, Fla. — He didn’t make his big league debut until last June, and even now, he has just 71 games of major league experience to his credit.
He’s not anywhere near the highest-paid player on the Red Sox and it took an injury to another young player to get him onto the Team USA roster for the World Baseball Classic.
But make no mistake: what he lacks in service time and tenure, he more than makes up for in star power. Roman Anthony, about to begin his first major league season, has very quickly become the face of the Red Sox franchise.
He’s the most in-demand interview subject and the player fans want to see most as they mill about the Fenway South spring training complex.
Worried about the Red Sox not boasting enough power? Anthony will fix that. Complaining that the team lacks star power? Just wait for Anthony’s first full season!
Alex Cora has appointed him as the team’s leadoff hitter thanks to his potential for being an offensive dynamo, likening his quick-strike ability to the likes of George Springer and Mookie Betts. Anthony has a keen understanding of the strike zone, enough power to hit the ball out of the ballpark and the sheer athleticism to make an immediate impact.
In many ways, he is the Red Sox’ version of Drake Maye — young, handsome and seemingly destined for superstardom. Like Maye, he teased everyone with his talent in his first season. Now, he’s ready to show what he can do over an entire season, his second. The possibilities seem limitless.
∗ The Red Sox are privately indicating that the No. 5 spot in the rotation isn’t locked down, but I’d be surprised if it went to anybody other than Johan Oviedo.
Oviedo has too often been injured or inconsistent in the big leagues. But given his size and stuff, there’s a lot of upside and it’s hard to imagine him being optioned to Worcester or utilized out of the bullpen.
∗ Best guess on the new ABS system in MLB: There may be some rocky moments in spring training and early in the season as the bugs get worked out. But like the replay challenge and pitch clock, before long, it will be second nature and better for the game.
The object is to get the calls right, but the fact that there’s a strategy as to when to best utilize your challenges makes it all the more compelling.
∗ Watching Olympic hockey, the sport dodged a bullet with all of its tied games being decided in overtime. It would have been an injustice for some of these close contests to go to a shootout, which feels gimmicky.
The NHL would be wise to scrap the shootout altogether. Play the 3-on-3 OT format for 10 minutes instead of five and the product would be that much better.
The shootout got the league attention coming out of the 2004-05 lockout season, but it’s since been exposed as a poor way to decide who wins and who loses, like the NBA going to a three-point contest if a game’s tied after one overtime period.
∗ This hasn’t attracted much attention, but a search of the goalies with the best goals-against average in the NHL this season reveals two familiar names for Bruins fans.
Dan Vladar, who was traded to Calgary by the Bruins five years ago for a third-round pick, sports a 2.47 GAA in 33 games for the Philadelphia Flyers. Then there’s Brandon Bussi, who left the Bruins last summer as a free agent and was then claimed on waivers by Carolina, has a microscopic 2.16 GAA for the Hurricanes and recently signed a three-year contract extension.
That’s two successful, young — and inexpensive – goalies whom the Bruins let get away.
∗ Maybe he does it to help himself with motivation, but Jaylen Brown, an established NBA superstar, sure seems to look for reasons to take offense. His diatribe over the city of Beverly Hills shutting down an All-Star event is only the latest example.
∗ It sure seemed as though Alex Cora was trying to send a loud message to Marcelo Mayer with his remarks Friday, didn’t it?
∗ The Indiana Bears doesn’t have a great ring to it. Tough to think of the Monsters of the Midway playing in a state other than Illinois.
∗ NBC’s Olympic hockey coverage has been a great platform for Eddie Olczyk, only the best analyst in the game. Olczyk anticipates as few can and succeeds in telling the viewer what might happen next, rather than reviewing something that already took place.
∗ Few former Celtic players resonated with the fan base the way Al Horford did. But his comments about the reasons behind leaving Boston sure were cryptic.
∗ Both Rafael Devers and Alex Bregman did the smart thing, essentially offering no response to the barbs tossed their way by Tom Werner and Sam Kennedy last weekend. No sense litigating the past, a lesson Red Sox management and ownership apparently refuses to learn.
∗ Man on the Run, a documentary that focuses on Paul McCartney’s first 10 years after the break-up of the Beatles, has plenty of good previously unseen footage — both performance and home movies — that is fun to watch, even if the whole thing ultimately feels a little underwhelming.
∗ RIP to Bill Mazeroski, who smacked a World Series-winning walk-off homer in 1960, one of the handful of greatest Series moments of all time. Imagine, in our viral world, how Mazeroski’s homer would have landed.
∗ Mock NFL drafts in the month of February seem a little…..let’s go with premature.
