Roman Anthony's Return - Breaking Balls with Tony Mazz - 9-4

0:00back here on breaking balls red socks are obviously in a mode here where they're trying to prepare for the postseason. And obviously came up on the winning Baltimore last night, comfortably in position of that wall card spot. The games are as long as the red talks win their share of the games with little less meaningful. And it's really more about individual players and preparation for the playoffs here down the stretch. And I know, look, I was getting a little concerned there for a couple of days that the red socks were starting to slip. But the winning Baltimore last night did help tremendously. They still have three more with the Orioles. I thought that was a big game for the red socks last night. And so it alleviates or eases some of the concerns about them sliding a little bit and maybe making themselves vulnerable. Thus far, really the stories over the last week or so have been the returns of Trevor's story and more importantly Roman Anthony. So I want to spend a little time on Roman Anthony because I think there are indications here that this might be the single most positive development with the red socks that has taken place over the last

1:04five or six days. I'm going back now to August 30th, which is the finale in New York. When Roman Anthony joined the team, he has since played five games. He's played them all Trevor stories only played four. He sat out the opener Baltimore. But I think there's some stuff going on with Roman Anthony that gives you an indication of just how much an impact he can be. Meanwhile, just as an aside, the red socks are trying to stabilize their pitching. Everything is important in terms of getting the house in order for the postseason. But it feels like the Roman Anthony part of this is going well. And there are a number of things that I want to point to with Roman Anthony that I think indicate how locked in and in midseason form. He is despite coming back in just five games. And I mentioned this because a year ago at this time, and I was talking to Jared Carabas the other day. Let's see, today is Friday. So this was Wednesday night when Jared was on the baseball hour. And Jared was mentioning that Anthony missed basically the whole month of September last year. So the conversation

2:10I had with Jabberd was on September 2nd September 2nd of 2025 was the last day that Roman Anthony played in the game last season. So point forward. He was not in the lineup. He didn't play. He didn't have any impact. Obviously he wasn't in the playoff series against the Yankees, the red socks, missed him tremendously. And at that time, I thought Roman Anthony was peaking. I thought we were starting to see the full package of Roman Anthony really. Let's call it in his last dozen games or so before he get injured. And when I say the full package, I mean that he had started to hit for power. He had started to hit for a run production early in the year. He was getting his hits. He was getting on base, but there wasn't a lot of run production, which is fine. He was a rookie. And this is sort of one of the lessons that comes along with young players that when you integrate them, there's going to be a learning curve. And you're not going to get the full product right away. It takes a little while to get to that point. In the case of Anthony, it really only took a few months and then we started to see it, which was pretty fast. And he was really starting to hit for

3:16power and production when he get injured. And then that was it. He came up this year, struggle badly at the beginning of the year. Then get it. And we hadn't seen him since. What we are seeing now is the Anthony who was playing on September 2nd of 2025 before he got hurt. And I think there's a lot of evidence to show this. So first of all, Anthony so far has hit two home runs. He's hit a couple of doubles. And I just want to take time to show you how these are happening and really what it reflects more than anything. So the first home run that Roman Anthony hit was at family park against the Seattle Mariners. Again, we can't show you a video, but I can show you the still images. And obviously right hand around the mountain, this ball went to left field. Both of his home runs have been to the opposite field, which to me is a very good sign. Opposite field power is what really separates the great hitters in the game from the, you know, what I don't want to call ordinary

4:18hitters, but more standard good players separates a good player from a great player is there are great player from a good player, the opposite field power. And so Roman Anthony has the ability to do this. The home run he hit against the Seattle, you see the ball was on the outer part of the plate, just catching the outside of the strike zone. And what I love about this still images, just you can see that he hasn't over committed to the pole side. He's in his hands can adjust for you. He's got his arms are sort of extended a little bit of a way from his body here. He's able to cover that outside part of the plate. And when you add in the plate discipline of Roman Anthony, along with his ability to adjust to pitches and drive them, what you get is a high average, you know, high on base, high slugging kind of player. It's really the perfect mix when you're talking about the kind of hitter you want or an elite middle of the order, you know, centerpiece

5:18foundational bat. And this is why everybody's been raving about Roman Anthony since the time he was in the minor leagues. So you see he's still got pretty good balance in the box. His arms are moving away from his body to cover that outside part of the plate. The pitch is in the strike zone. So which is a big thing, meaning Anthony knows this is a pitch I've got to swing at. If this pitch is another few inches outside, I'm willing to bet that he can read that and, you know, or that he would have been able to read it in this case and then stay away. Now look, everybody makes mistakes. We're talking about abilities that are done over large samples of time. Everybody goes through good, uh, good stretches and bad stretches. But this ball is really in the lower half of the strike zone, terms of heightened, uh, you know, depth, uh, and the outer part of the strike zone, he hits this into the monster seas for a home run, which is pretty good. Now again, I'm going to take you to the second home run, which happened in Baltimore against the Orioles,

6:23similar sort of thing. But the pitch is not quite as far outside. It's a little more up and again, you see his hands are away from his body, similar kind of thing. There's not an over commitment as far as his hips and his lower half. He's not completely bailing out to the first side, which you see a lot of guys do because they can only handle one half of the plate. Anthony can cover the whole thing. And so again, right into picture on the mound, but similar result. This was also an opposite field home run. And what to me, it just indicates is that Anthony is able to cover the outside part of the strike zone right now. You say, okay, well, that's a good sign. And he's getting to those who's watching your network when the threats come fast. Andrew Sestam, who detects response and shuts attacks down day and night. Who powers advanced protection with Barracuda XDR before damage is done. Serving New England for 30 years, access security trust introsystems.com.

7:28He's showing great timing with his hands. And he's able to move his hands away from his body. He's making the read all of these things are apparent. And this is the kind of step you see when a guy is locked in the way that Roman Anthony is right now. This is, by the way, some part of the reason I like doing these things here versus on the baseball hour broadcast, which is pure baseball show. Obviously that we air from six to seven. I don't really have video that I can show in those shows. It's a radio show. So these are harder topics to cover in a baseball hour like that because you need some of the visuals. You need to be able to see it. And frankly, you know, it audio wise, it doesn't do the trick. So it's not the kind of thing you would necessarily get into detail or depth in on a radio show. Some people have emailed about this and other comments about this sort of thing. Why don't we get more of this on the baseball hour? Because you need the visuals. You need to be able to see what we're talking about. Now, I want to go to the two doubles

8:32that Anthony has hit. And these are his four extra bass hits thus far. And I just think these are important because either one, these are the ones that he's driving the ball on. And if you go back to his first at bat, when he came back on August 30th against the Yankees in New York, this is what it looked like. Now, we'll warrants on the mound. This pitch you see is on the inner part of the plate. And again, I would say Anthony's lower half is largely the same. He's leaning back just to tick more if you were to look at the other photos. But I think this is a reaction to the pitch. The pitch is on the inside part of the plate or in a half, not quite on the inside, but you can see it. There are circled in red. And some of these red circles came out better than for some reason. But you can see his hands are closer to his body. He's got his elbows tucked. So he's pulling in the back because he knows who the pitch is. This is a double to right field. He turned on this ball. And if you remember, it one hopped on the warning track, went into the stands. There was fan interference. It came back down. But the point is the Yankees pitched

9:38him in over the weekend. And the first thing he did in his first at bat was Yanke a double into the right field corner. So he was on this pitch. And again, as we talk about plate coverage with hitters, the ability to handle both sides of the plate. Roman Anthony's on this. This was a pretty sure this was a fastball from Warren. Might have been a two seamer because my guess is that he wanted it to bend back. But Anthony was on it. Again, you see the difference in where the hand placement is, where the pitch result is and the hit was to the other field. So if it's inside, you pull it, it's outside. You go the other way. And the big thing with Anthony is that he can drive both of those balls. Now there was also a double he hit in the Mariners series that was a little more down the first baseline. And this one in Yankee Stadium wasn't exactly right down the line. It was, you know, I don't know, 15, 20 feet, maybe more than that, maybe more like 15 yards, 20 yards off of the right field line. But against the Mariners, he hit another one of these.

10:44And this ball was down and in. And you can see here again, the swing looks just down right textbook. The hands are in this probably caught him a little bit later in the swing. So that his hands are a little more forward towards the pitcher by the time we froze the frame. But balls down and in on the lower left quadrant of the strike zone. Again, not quite on the inside edge. But he is all over it. This ball almost goes right down the first baseline. I would say this one was about 10 feet inside the line. He whistled it down the right field line, pulled it down there for an extra base hit and was able to cover that part of the plate. So when you lay all these out, I'm going to try to do this quickly just to see if it works. And again, apologies for red circles being quite as clear on all four images. But if we just go photo to photo, here it is. This is more, this is outside against the Mariners home run. This is up and away, a little higher up against the Orioles home run.

11:44This one is a little more middle in, not quite all the way in, but on the, I would say just barely on the inner half of the plate. He pulls this in the air down the right field line and then down and in Anthony again drops his hands, pulls this one down the first baseline. And the result is another extra base hits hit. So four different bats, four different pitches. And I should mention that the last one was on a breaking ball. So that ball was turning down and so Anthony adjusts and his ability, the ability to adjust on a pitch in mid, you know, mid sequence is, you know, the essence of hitting. I think in a lot of ways, identify what it is, react to it, have all your body parts in the right places. There's a lot of timing involved to complex things, a complicated swing. Simple as Sebal hitball as much as people would like to say it. There were a lot of moving parts that can disrupt your timing and Anthony right now has them all going. When we talk about his overall performance, it's pretty clear the impact he has had on the Red Sox here in the early part

12:50of the year. So since returning on August 30th, Anthony has 24 plate appearances. His batting average is 455. His on base percentage is 500. He's slugging 909 again. You're getting power with the doubles in the home runs. That's an OPS of nearly 2000 two home runs for extra base hits. He's still striking out about 20% of the time, which is not an absurdly high number early in the year. When Anthony was here, the number was up in the 30s. And so you can see that he looks like he is in midseason form. Now, if I were to be a cynic, I'd go back to the early part of the area and say, well, why wasn't he hit all of the... Who's watching your network when the threats come fast? Andrew Sessom. Who detects, responds and shuts attacks down day and night. Andrew Sessom. Who powers advanced protection with Barracuda XDR before damage is done. Andrew Sessom.

13:53Serving New England for 30 years, access security trust, introsystems.com. Spring training, why couldn't he come out like this early in the year? And I would say probably a combination of factors. One, spring training, pitching and regular season games aren't exactly the same thing. And also, there was a lot of pressure on Roman Anthony produced to produce. The Red Sox were expecting a lot from him. He was the centerpiece guy. People were talking about him as the MVP. The team started to struggle. It got worse. And all of a sudden, you start swinging yourself into the ground. And that image of a corkscrew just spinning yourself right into the ground when you're in the batter's box. Then he got hurt. And he got time away from the game. Maybe not all for the better. Obviously, the Red Sox sent him down to Florida to probably try to get him dialed in again and get him more serious about his return. But as the team started to play better, and I think this happened with Trevor's story as well, I think all of a sudden, Anthony's story

14:58looked at it and said, Oh, these guys are winning without us. And so there's two things there. One, we didn't have anything to do with this. And they felt left out, which would be normal. And then beyond that, there's a reason to come back and play again this year. So once his rehab started, it went very, very quickly. He seemed to be hitting the ball right out of the gate on his rehab assignments. Because I include, you know, obviously he went from Portland to a Worcester. Then he came up to the big leagues and picked up right where he left off. And I think obviously a lot of that has to do with health. I also think it has to do with mindset, with appreciating the game more than you might have before coming back to a situation where there wasn't as much pressure on you because the team showed that it could win without you. You had all that up. And I think that it's why Roman Anthony is in the spot. He's in. So long story short, the Red Sox pitching right now is a concern. I think they know it. They've obviously taken steps

16:01to try to address it. Sonny Bay, a gray has been pushed back. Jake Bennett was given a rest. They moved Peyton totally back a little bit now slotting him behind gray. Certainly seems like they have positioned those guys to be their numbers one and two starters. And they start the postseason. They're giving them extra rest, I think, in their outings the rest of the way. They have a cushion to be able to do that. But Anthony is a huge variable in that lineup when he's swinging the bat like this. Because again, when you were talking about a guy who hits for average, gets on base, hits for power to all fields, especially the opposite field, you are talking about an impact bat in the middle of the lineup. If you get contraris back and then they can get anything out of will you or bring you an Adley Rutchman, a Rutchman, obviously, with two home runs last hand in Baltimore, the lineup actually starts to look good or better. Now, I don't know if it's good enough to compete with the real heavy hitters and major league baseball. Some of the best lineups in the game at Lanna,

17:03the Dodgers, maybe the Cubs, I don't know that the Brewers have the kind of thunderous lineup that some of those other teams do. But if the Red Sox get their pitching setup and Anthony can remain and somewhere in zone he's in now, that's the team I think that everybody wants to see in October. So anyway, thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Be sure to catch our programming on 985FAs as always. Certainly catch us on our YouTube channel here with the Breaking Balls feature as well as the shows are also available here on YouTube and a lot of these videos are available in audio form as well. Although as I said, I think they're better for viewing, not for listening. So thanks again for watching Breaking Balls. We'll catch up with you next time.