As the 2025 MLB Draft quickly approaches, the Prospects Live team wants to make your life as easy as possible. In this series of articles, I'll be providing team-by-team analysis of their recent draft trends, their available draft capital for 2025, any areas of the draft they've heavily targeted, as well as a few names in this year's class that might fit into their historically preferred archetype.
Max Ellingsen
This analysis isn't sourced for the upcoming year, nor is it a guarantee the organization won't pivot from what they've done in the past. Simply put, this article aims to provide an in-depth look at teams and their recent draft classes to try and decipher trends that could help uncover players your favorite team might be targeting. It's far from a perfect science, but I've done my job if it makes things easier to follow on draft day.
Boston Red Sox
- 2025 Bonus Pool Value - $12,409,300 (13th)
- Top 100 selections - 15, 33, 75, 87
Boston finds themselves with as much young talent adjacent or at the big league level as anyone in the league, however with the front office changing back in 2023, most all of that talent was acquired by a previous regime. While we’ve got one draft to look back on for this iteration of the Red Sox, their four top one hundred picks and 13th ranked bonus pool has a bit more variability than other organizations with a longer tenured front office.
2024 Draft Overview
In Craig Breslow and Company’s first draft in the organization, the Red Sox opted for the uber-talented Braden Montgomery ($480,000 underslot) with the twelfth overall pick, a relative coup considering his draft status in the class. They followed with TCU left hander Payton Tolle ($150,000 overslot) and Florida reliever Brandon Neely ($180,000 underslot) in the second and third rounds, nabbing college arms with some size and interesting metrics to back them up. Zach Ehrhard ($130,000 underslot) and Brandon Clarke ($60,000 underslot) came next, landing them a premiere pitching talent and an undersized but speedy outfield prospect while saving them some cash. They continued to save with Blake Aita ($50,000 underslot) and Will Turner ($25,000 underslot) in the sixth and seventh before splurging on talented prepster Conrad Cason ($1,030,000 overslot) in the eighth, ultimately giving them a supremely talented class thanks to savvy underslot deals and aggressive spending late. They still managed to go overslot on guys like Devin Futrell ($70,000 overslot), Steven Brooks ($50,000 overslot), and Brady Tygart ($150,000 overslot) as well, further spreading their value throughout the entirety of their class. A really impressive job to say the least.
2023 Draft Overview
The 2023 version of the Red Sox’s draft strategy looked much more top heavy than the one in 2024, however they again landed a huge steal in Kyle Teel ($660,000 underslot) for an underslot deal. They burned through all of it and more with second rounder Nazzan Zanetello ($1,300,000 overslot) and third rounder Antonio Anderson ($650,000 overslot), however this gave them three relatively large names with a substantial amount of upside despite their dearth of remaining funds. They saved a bit with Matt Duffy ($230,000 underslot), however they landed a massive steal next with Kristian Campbell (slot) out of Georgia Tech in the Comp C round. They went overslot for Justin Riemer ($10,000 overslot) and secured Connelly Early (slot) in the fifth as well, giving them a nice flyer arm out of the collegiate ranks. With most of their coffers empty, they had to save a substantial amount of money in the later rounds and didn’t swing nearly as big as they did in 2024, however I’d say this was a massively successful draft class considering the success of both Teel and Campbell.
2022 Draft Overview
The Red Sox went underslot early with two prep shortstops in Mikey Romero ($680,000 underslot) and Cutter Coffey ($60,000 underslot) before their major splash in Roman Anthony ($1,680,000 overslot) followed with their third pick, ultimately securing the future number one overall prospect with 79th pick in the class. They continued with Dalton Rogers ($150,000 underslot), Chase Meidroth ($190,000 underslot), and Noah Dean ($20,000 underslot) and ended up splurging on prep catcher Brooks Brannon ($550,000 overslot) in the ninth, however their other picks outside of that were strictly money savers that had minimal impact on the bonus pool. It was another exceptional draft for the Red Sox with how well Roman Anthony has done as a professional and further elucidates how much they like getting creative. It’s obviously a different front office regime, but even the 2024 draft had these same themes. Perhaps that’s just coincidence, but the organization has been consistent with it for years.
Early Round Demographics
The Red Sox have seemingly taken the best player to fall to them in recent years and have somehow signed them for significantly below slot value each time, a trend I’m not sure is just happenstance or a definitive negotiation tactic they’re somehow conjuring up. Regardless of how it’s happening, they’ve gone bat-heavy early and seem to put a fair amount of weight on the metrics, but they’ve done well with unique arms that have some nice projection to them as well. They’re quite good at extracting value from what the draft is giving them, and I’d expect that flexibility to continue.
Late Round Demographics
Similarly to most other organizations, the Sox are pitcher dominated late, however they like to take a medium sized swing in the mid to late rounds. I’d expect some sort of prep player to make their way to the Red Sox organization between round seven and twelve to get a six to seven figure bonus, perhaps a high upside bat or a “stuffy” flamethrower with some projection. They’ve got enough capital to make something like that happen, and it wouldn’t shock me if they went for it yet again.
Names to Know
Gavin Kilen, Tennessee SS - I can see Kilen being popular in Boston as an option to potentially save them a bit of cash to maneuver in later rounds. Kilen possesses one of the soundest offensive profiles in this class and seems like a fit for Beantown.
Gage Wood, Arkansas RHP - It wouldn’t surprise me if he goes a hair earlier than this, but Wood’s meteoric rise has him right around the middle of the first round conversation. I think his unique blend of stuff and strike throwing could be attractive to Boston, though I’m sure the medicals would need to be promising in order for them to go with an arm in round one.
Wehiwa Aloy, Arkansas SS - Yet another Arkansas performer as an option for the Sox, Aloy was recently awarded the Golden Spikes award and has an intriguing blend of power and defense that I’m sure teams will covet. It checks a lot of boxes and makes sense in this range of the first round.
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