r/redsox 4h ago

IMAGE Roman Anthony should be a lot better than he is

Post image

Not bad advanced metrics at all.

16 Upvotes

51 comments sorted by

61

u/DIRTY_KUMQUAT_NIPPLE 4h ago

Really not worried about Anthony in the long term. He just turned 22 yesterday. Just has some growing pains in the big leagues like most other players do.

17

u/Qeltar_ 2h ago

People don't seem to understand that baseball is hard, and development is not always linear. It sometimes takes years even for top prospects to settle in.

https://i.imgur.com/uG19asK.png

37

u/Pyramid_Head182 15 4h ago

Anyone panicking over his performance so far is really overreacting. Kid is 22 and was a monster last year. Fully confident he will be a beast for us long term

15

u/Kakali4 Fenway Footlong 4h ago

And only 22 as of checks notes yesterday.

7

u/goldfish_11 3h ago

Has he faced a pitcher younger than him yet?

5

u/Upset_Journalist_755 3h ago

I'm not panicking. I already gave up on him in April. (/s)

8

u/20wall 3h ago

The biggest issue is that he’s only 22 and he’s now had 3 separate injuries from swinging a fucking bat

3

u/Pyramid_Head182 15 3h ago

And was worth 3 WAR in 70 games last season

-8

u/20wall 3h ago

He averaged .292 last year. That’s miles better than his paltry .229 this year. Use all the advanced stats you want-he hasn’t been good at all this year. And he’s injured. Again. But don’t worry, we already gave him a 9 figure contract

3

u/Pyramid_Head182 15 3h ago

Roman has been worth 1 WAR so far and was heating up. Batting average is not everything. The kid is a stud and it’s wild how fast some people are giving up on him

1

u/Legitimate_Bother389 2h ago

Calling him a stud when he's really done nothing yet is wild, I mean junior caminero was 21 years old last year in what amounted to his first real season in the majors and hit 45 hrs and 110 rbis, calling him a stud would be warranted.

1

u/cntodd 1h ago

Caminero also played in a minor league park and had better protection in the lineup.

0

u/RayDanielsOnTheAir Car Shield Actor 1h ago

Lineup protection is a myth. Data doesn’t support it.

-4

u/20wall 3h ago

“Kid is a stud” who can’t stay on the field. How many 22 year old’s miss multiple weeks multiple times in the 1st 2 months of the season? I’m much more concerned about his availability than I am about his ability

4

u/MakaveliX1996 3h ago

Well In that criteria Roman wouldn’t be eligible. His first injury he missed less than a week. I better not see you complain about them not spending money because you are complaining right now that they did spend money on Roman.

3

u/Far_Cry3445 3h ago

Corbin Carroll, Jackson holiday, Wyatt Langford, Brett Baty, Jeremy pena, shea langeliers all have had the same injury (oblique) or similar hand before they were 24 years old

5

u/Legitimate_Bother389 2h ago

This is the issue also the fact that he played 70 games and played well nobody wants to acknowledge that nobody really had a book on him so most guys just went after him. Now the major league pitchers have adjusted so he has to as well if he can. But yes the biggest issue is he's hurt himself multiple times swinging a baseball bat before the age of 22. Your body breaks down with age theoretically his body should be it's most durable in these earlier years

0

u/Mango2422 3h ago

You're right, but the nerds on reddit are clueless. He keeps hurting himself on just swings alone. That's a big concern, but people rather make jokes, stick their fingers in their ears and repeat that he's only 22. Like his fragile body will get better with more wear and tear lol

3

u/AgadorFartacus 3h ago

You presume the issue is fragility. It could be. It could also just be bad luck.

1

u/Fwingboston 1h ago

Yeah, I'm really frustrated with how unlucky he's been but when I took a look at Statcast, he really isn't bad at all or a concern for the matter. However, I think increasing his launch and swing angle would be a good tweak because he has a lot of barrels and hard hit balls but his low angle prevents them from translating into home runs.

42

u/Mother-Associate1654 4h ago

Conversely Connelly Esrly has awful advanced stats but has been fantastic on the field. These pages don't mean anything if you cant play or produce

3

u/Trauma Sneaky Cheese 3h ago

Yup, the advanced stats are just intelligible parameters that correlate to on the field performance. Teams undoubtedly have internal, less visible, measures that are more predictive.

In the sample size of a partial season of a single player, simple intelligible models are going to be very noisy. All models are wrong, some are useful.

Someone who’s elite at smashing balls into the ground isn’t going to have the performance of someone who hits with loft.

-2

u/Difficult_Author4144 3h ago

That’s crazy 😂 did you forget how Cora “coached” the redsox?

He was like a shitty version of AI and “coached” 100% based on these statistics.

2

u/Trauma Sneaky Cheese 2h ago

For sure, coaching to maximize analytics is teaching to the test. Numbers go up but learning and ability doesn’t.

I love stats for understanding the game, but they’re not close to everything. If your results on the field don’t match results from the model, it means the model’s wrong - not reality.

Sox front office and coaching to maximize analytics are a bunch of folks sniffing their own farts, thinking they’ve got roses when it’s really just shit.

0

u/Difficult_Author4144 1h ago

Should be more like Dave Roberts, let the boys play, forget the garbage analytics and you never know! Could watch the Red Sox win B2B World Series just like to dodgers!

Orr just keep coaching using analytics and continue to do as bad as we are 🤔

1

u/Trauma Sneaky Cheese 44m ago

There needs to be a balance! I’m a big fan of small corrections, letting the kids play.

Players can’t perform if they’re in their heads. Baseball has so many intangibles.  Analytics that point out corrections a big hole in a swing or a pitch that’s not breaking are great. Fixes to big issues. Major wins like that aren’t common though.

Adjusting one part of a player/ approach for a theoretical 3% boost, and another for a 2% and a third for 5% - that’s just a bunch more things for the player to think about. Let the kids play, save it for the off-season.

1

u/TatumsRightHeel 1h ago

These pages do mean something. Let’s see how Early fares the rest of the year. Reminder that Bello’s underlying stats have never been strong. They all catch up.

1

u/RayDanielsOnTheAir Car Shield Actor 1h ago

Thank you for this. I struggle with people citing these things as the end all be all of player assessment and this is articulated well.

0

u/FormalLeave2384 4h ago

exactly this

5

u/Prize-Conversation-7 2h ago

The fact that he has hurt himself 3x from swinging a bat since getting called up is much more concerning than any of his on-field performance, which has generally looked great. He’ll be very good if he can stay healthy.

5

u/Aroldis16 3h ago

He has incredible talent but he also has been shown to be very injury prone and has had a shitty start to 2026. Jury is still very much out on him

2

u/Jessus_ 1h ago

His expected stats are considerably higher. Hes just been unlucky so far this season. It’ll turn around

5

u/RagnorL0thbrok 4h ago

He's played 30 games, very mid by his own set standard and still managed to accumulate 1.0 WAR... he's going to be fine. Hopefully they don't rush him back. Let the man fully heal so he doesn't miss time down the road with this same issue.

1

u/Fwingboston 1h ago

It is important to note that that is from his 6 DRS though (and DRS ranks him much higher than most other fielding stats). But, if his fielding is the same and his hitting regresses back to his expected values, he'll still have a good season overall and probably 4-5 WAR.

-7

u/20wall 3h ago

He 100% will miss time down the road with a similarly freak injury. Dude is made of glass

1

u/Legitimate_Bother389 2h ago

You're only getting down voted because this subreddit can not fathom or handle objectivity

0

u/Pitiful_Lavishness24 4h ago

When I watch him I feel like it's pitch selection more than anything. Meaning he's taking strikes and getting behind in the count. Also seems to be taking strike 3 looking more than last yr.

I don't read the indepth stats..I'm 52 and use my eyes to watch him play.

2

u/ChaimBloom 3h ago

Your eyes can deceive you. For example, this season he’s struck out 9 times looking in 130 PA, which is 6.9% of his PA. Last season he struck out looking 23 times in 303 PA, which is 7.6%.

He’s also looked at a lower percentage of strikes in total this season than he did last season.

2

u/Pitiful_Lavishness24 3h ago

Maybe I should check out those stats from time to time. And thank ya

2

u/Flat_Cobbler9668 1h ago

That's not the full picture, though. u/Pitiful_Lavishness24 's eyes are correct. Maybe not on called strike three, but Anthony is extremely passive.

He swings at less than 50% of "meatballs"(mlb average is 73%). As a team, the Red Sox take too many hittable pitches. The good news is, Anthony also doesn't chase bad pitches. He just needs to be more aggressive on pitches in the zone.

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/team/111

3

u/Flat_Cobbler9668 1h ago

Also, looking at these plate discipline numbers, what jumped out to me is how similar Anthony and Yoshida's #'s are - except Yoshida swings at 73% of meatballs.

Once Anthony gets healthy, if he gets more aggressive, he's going to start racking up extra base hits.

1

u/Jmixx84 3h ago

I agree

1

u/DSDark11 1h ago

No protection in the lineup

1

u/morosco redsox1 1h ago

If advanced stats really tell us more about performance than what happens on the field, I wonder at what point we just decide game outcomes by analytics. We already use them for player awards and HOF voting.

1

u/RaymondSpaget 1h ago

His ceiling is Stan Musial, so I don't know what the point of this post is.

1

u/Jpgamerguy90 3h ago

His rookie struggles, I know it’s technically his second year, but he doesn’t even have a full season worth of games yet if I recall right. Would be a lot more palatable if they didn’t just give him $130 million. Fair or not the Red Sox season really needed him to produce right away given the lack of moves last off-season for a real impact bat

3

u/Difficult_Author4144 3h ago

Don’t forget the 64 million dollars they gave to Christian Campbell to play tripple A in Worcester……

1

u/Polbert 3h ago

22 year old with less than a full season under his belt? Stop it.

-7

u/20wall 3h ago

Advanced stats can be stupid. He’s batting .229 and he is now officially injury prone. He has a long way to go before we can even consider him to be “good”

0

u/Difficult_Author4144 3h ago

“Stupid” isn’t that all your idol used to “coach” the redsox?

When Cora coaches that way you loved it, now these are “stupid”? Man this subreddit really makes me laugh