Roman Anthony Is MLB’s New No. 1 Prospect
Image credit: (Photo courtesy of Ashley Green/Worcester Red Sox)
There’s a new No. 1 prospect in baseball, as Junior Caminero graduated last night.
So we welcome Red Sox outfielder Roman Anthony to the top of the Baseball America Top 100 Prospects list.
Anthony will assuredly remain in this spot for the remainder of the 2024 season. He’s in Triple-A and will not exhaust his rookie/prospect eligibility this season. This also puts him in pole position to be our No. 1 prospect on our offseason Baseball America Top 100, which we will unveil in January 2025.
Roman’s Rise
How Anthony set out to prove he’s more than just an elite slugger.
If Anthony remains No. 1, he will become the third Red Sox prospect to rank No. 1 in the now 35-year history of the BA Top 100. Righthander Daisuke Matsuzaka ranked No. 1 in 2007, and outfielder Andrew Benintendi ranked No. 1 in 2017.
The first Baseball America Top 100 was unveiled in 1990, and for more than a decade, it was updated only once a year.
In the 2000s, we started to do a top 25, then a top 50 and eventually a top 100 at the midseason, and we now update the Top 100 each month during the MiLB season, but we treat the offseason list, which gives us the time to do the most reporting and analysis, as our “official” list for archival purposes.
With Caminero’s graduation, the Red Sox currently have four Top 25 prospects as well, with Anthony (No. 1), Marcelo Mayer (No. 10), Kristian Campbell (No. 24) and Kyle Teel (No. 25).
The Red Sox were also the last team to have four prospects rank in the top 25 of the offseason Top 100. Yoan Moncada, Andrew Benintendi, Rafael Devers and Anderson Espinoza all ranked within the Top 25 in 2016.
