![\"Worcester](\"https:\/\/bdc2020.o0bc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/image002-4-66f16d258cc1d-768x432.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The windiest November afternoons in\u00a0Stillwater, Okla. don\u2019t greet you with a warm smile upon an unprepared arrival. A blast of chilly air saps the energy out of your skin and makes your knees tremble. Your brittle fingers feel as though they\u2019re one gust of wind away from snapping off your palm. You\u2019ll be at risk of losing a hat if it doesn\u2019t sit perfectly on your head.<\/p>\n
But\u00a0Roman Anthony doesn\u2019t need warm greetings. Any place that allows him to improve his game is warm enough to keep his passion for baseball ablaze.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why the outfielder chose to spend some of his valuable offseason time in Stillwater\u00a0perfecting his swing\u00a0with his friend Jackson Holliday, former No. 1 prospect and current second baseman for the Baltimore Orioles. Plenty of their training (thankfully) took place inside the comfort of the batting cage that the Holliday family installed in their\u00a0home sports facility. Still, the then 19-year-old had to travel over\u00a0a thousand miles away from his sunny North Palm Beach home\u00a0and brave the Oklahoma wind just to train with Holliday.<\/p>\n
\u201cNormally, 18, 19-year-old kids, they want to hang out at the beach or whatever,\u201d said former\u00a0Boston Red Sox Miami-area scout Willie Romay, Anthony\u2019s signing scout. \u201cAnd here\u2019s Roman grinding it out in the offseason.\u201d<\/p>\n
All that training paid off. Now that Tampa Bay Rays third baseman Junior Caminero has graduated from prospect status, Anthony sits atop\u00a0Baseball America<\/em>\u2019s\u00a0prestigious rankings list as\u00a0their No. 1 prospect. The most recent\u00a0Red Sox prospect\u00a0to achieve this honor was Andrew Benintendi in 2017.\u00a0Baseball America<\/em>\u00a0isn\u2019t the only evaluation site with high praise for Anthony \u2014 he\u2019s\u00a0MLB Pipeline\u2019s No. 12 prospect\u00a0and is ranked\u00a011th on FanGraphs\u2019 list.<\/p>\n Living up to those massive expectations is a lot of pressure for a 20-year-old to have to face. A lot of pressure that Anthony doesn\u2019t feel.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m just having fun,\u201d Anthony told\u00a0Boston.com.\u00a0\u201cThis is what I like to do.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s natural for a player to feel pressure before a game, but there are plenty of ways they relieve it. Some spend a little more time in the weight room. Others joke with teammates to put their minds at ease. Anthony does both of these things, but not often to relieve pressure; he doesn\u2019t feel much of it. Whenever the outfielder walks from his locker to the weight room, he brings with him a sense of unbothered tranquility that most prospects his age won\u2019t harness for several years.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes you don\u2019t even realize [how young he is],\u201d Anthony\u2019s teammate\u00a0Marcelo Mayer\u00a0said. \u201cThat\u2019s how mature he is, and that\u2019s just the way he carries himself on and off the field.\u201d<\/p>\n But make no mistake: Anthony cares deeply\u00a0<\/em>about being a great baseball player. Romay first witnessed this passion when he came to watch one of Anthony\u2019s practices in his sophomore year of high school. On that day, the outfielder asked the scout what areas of his game he excelled at, and for the areas of his game that needed work.<\/p>\n When Romay returned three weeks later, Anthony asked the scout to watch him hit in the batting cage. Almost every swing and stance contained a piece of advice Romay gave to him.<\/p>\n \u201cHe took [my advice] and he said, \u2018You know what, I\u2019m going to build off of this,\u2019\u201d Romay said. \u201cGood players do that.\u201d<\/p>\n Anthony\u2019s desire to be great stems from an extreme competitive spirit \u2014 one that only a youngest child can have. His older siblings spent much of his childhood ordering him around, as many older siblings do. Their bossiness enkindled a competitive fire underneath Anthony that he let burn during every childhood sports game.<\/p>\n That inferno still blazes. It ignites Anthony\u2019s heart in everything he does, whether it\u2019s a round of golf, a game of pickup basketball, or when he steps up to the plate in the bottom of the ninth inning.<\/p>\n \u201cI hate to lose,\u201d Anthony said. \u201cI hate losing much more than I like winning.\u201d<\/p>\n Anthony\u2019s family gave him much more than his competitive nature. His parents, Tony and Lori Anthony, sponsored all of their children\u2019s athletic aspirations, from equipment to travel ball. They even found ways to enroll Anthony in schools that faced the toughest possible competition. They used all of their resources to ensure that their children would have active, challenging, sports-centric childhoods.<\/p>\n They didn\u2019t always have those resources though. Both of his parents worked throughout high school and even took on multiple jobs just to pay for college. When the Anthonys started their family, they prioritized making sports a core part of it.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were both fully committed to [giving] them all the opportunities and all the chances that we didn\u2019t have,\u201d Tony Anthony said.<\/p>\n This allowed a grateful Anthony to go to sleep every night and dream of becoming a professional athlete. At first, the sport didn\u2019t matter. He wanted to shoot hoops with the NBA\u2019s best. He wanted to catch passes on an NFL gridiron. But he always knew which sport he loved most.<\/p>\n \u201cBaseball was always the one,\u201d Anthony said. \u201cI was always carrying a bat around when I was younger, always throwing the ball against the wall, and baseball was the one that really stuck for me.\u201d<\/p>\n It only took one season playing each sport for nine-year-old Anthony to realize that no matter how many baskets he made or touchdowns he scored, nothing gave Anthony more joy than swinging a bat. His parents noticed. They tried to convince him to continue playing three sports and take regular breaks from each one, but Anthony wouldn\u2019t hear it. Baseball was the sport he loved and wanted to dedicate his life to.<\/p>\n So Anthony began devoting himself to becoming the best baseball player he could be. He developed into a smart hitter with a pristine swing and the ability to blast any baseball to the moon, a skill set that awarded him the\u00a02022 Gatorade Player of the Year for the state of Florida. The Red Sox saw promise in the power hitting outfielder, so they drafted him with their\u00a0compensation pick\u00a0for the\u00a0loss of starter Eduardo Rodriguez the offseason prior.<\/p>\n Anthony soon proved to be good compensation.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce he got to [High-A] Greenville,\u201d Tony Anthony said, \u201cHe was a different person.\u201d<\/p>\n Not a single baseball was safe from his swing. He mashed his way up the Red Sox organization in his second year in the system. His confidence rose, and so did his prestige. Fans labeled him as one of the Red Sox\u2019 \u201cBig 3\u201d of elite prospects alongside Mayer and Kyle Teel. SoxProspects.com first named Anthony their No. 1 Red Sox prospect this past November. He received a promotion from Double-A Portland to Triple-A Worcester in August before he was old enough to rent a car to get there.<\/p>\n These are all impressive feats for someone of Anthony\u2019s age. To Anthony, though, skill can be found in any type of player \u2014 no matter what year they were born.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the same game [for everyone], and the game doesn\u2019t really care about age,\u201d Anthony said.<\/p>\n Few 20-year-olds, 30-year-olds, or 40-year-olds playing professional baseball can say they were their sport\u2019s top prospect though. Anthony can, and those who\u2019ve been around him know that this won\u2019t be the only accomplishment of his career.<\/p>\n \u201cThe sky\u2019s the limit with Roman, man,\u201d Romay said. \u201cThis guy\u2019s gonna be around the game for a while, and he\u2019s gonna make a lot of people happy \u2014 a lot of fans happy \u2014 with the Red Sox.\u201d<\/p>\n The 20-year-old Anthony sits atop Baseball America\u2019s prestigious rankings list as their No. 1 prospect. The windiest November afternoons in\u00a0Stillwater, Okla. don\u2019t greet you with a warm… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":4029,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb"],"yoast_head":"\n<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"