BOSTON -- The Red Sox used to introduce participants in their rookie development program at Boston College, but on Wednesday they used Fenway Park's home clubhouse.
It's a fitting venue, because where attendees were once projected merely to augment a loaded big-league roster, they now clearly represent the future of the franchise.
In separate interviews this week alone, chief baseball officer Craig Breslow (in The Boston Globe) and chairman Tom Werner (via MassLive) helped explain Boston's lackluster offseason by noting the clearest path to contention runs through the farm system.
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As if to give everyone a taste of that future, the Red Sox installed nameplates above the home lockers for the prospects in attendance on Wednesday. One corner particularly caught the eye, because it featured the top three players in the system: shortstop Marcelo Mayer, outfielder Roman Anthony, and catcher Kyle Teel.
They're the most exciting trio of prospects to come through Boston since Xander Bogaerts, Mookie Betts, and Jackie Bradley Jr., and unlike that group, which could integrate slowly while David Ortiz, Dustin Pedroia, and Jon Lester carried the pressure of being superstars, this current crop will eventually be asked to play savior.
"I wouldn't say pressure," said Mayer. "We all love the game and we all love to be around each other and we all want to win. Every single person in this clubhouse wants to win, the Red Sox organization wants to win, and that's the only thing that matters in this city. So we're aware of that and that's our goal as well. We do everything we can every day to hopefully make that dream come true one day."
Ideally, Mayer and Co. would be arriving as reinforcements, but the Red Sox have hemorrhaged elite talent in recent years, and it's now apparent the plan is to await the next generation.
It has worked elsewhere. The 2016 Cubs, 2017 Astros, 2019 Nationals, 2020 Dodgers, and 2021 Braves won it all with homegrown cores. Those teams also boasted, at one time or another, the top overall prospects in baseball, whether it was Cubs third baseman Kris Bryant, Astros counterpart Alex Bregman, Nationals ace Stephen Strasburg, Dodgers shortstop Corey Seager, or Braves dynamo Ronald Acuña Jr.
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The Red Sox aren't quite at that level, with Mayer (14th), Anthony (21st), and Teel (62nd) all cracking Baseball America's most recent top 100, but they're the best the organization has got as it pulls back in free agency while awaiting clarity on just how good this core can be.
New second baseman Vaughn Grissom, acquired recently from the Braves for Chris Sale, experienced Atlanta's pipeline firsthand.
"I feel like a lot of the successful teams have a lot of homegrown talent, and then you go out and pick up a piece or two to help out," Grissom said. "There's a really good value in the relationships you develop with the team throughout the system. Just being familiar with trainers, clubbies, the whole nine yards. There's just super value in building through homegrown talent."
The trio are coming off markedly different seasons. Mayer, who looked like a potential No. 1 overall prospect while tearing up Single-A Greenville last spring, suffered a left shoulder impingement in May. He played through pain after being promoted to Double-A Portland, but hit only .189 and was shut down on Aug. 2. He just began swinging off a tee again and expects to be ready for the start of spring training.
Anthony, by contrast, shot through the system in his first full season after being selected in the second round in 2022 out of Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. He hit .272 with 14 homers between three levels, the line-drive machine finishing his season by hitting .343 in 10 games at Double-A.
His teammate at the end was Teel, a 2023 first-round pick out of Virginia who jumped from rookie ball to Double-A in only a matter of weeks, hitting .363 in his introduction to pro ball at a premium defensive position.
All three will likely open the season at Portland. Any one could conceivably force his way to Boston this summer.
"It's an honor to be counted on and it's an honor to be mentioned," Anthony said. "I think that you've always got to take that as a positive, obviously. But we're not there yet."
"I would say they are both great hitters and both great on defense," Teel added of his two high-profile teammates. "The number one thing is I would say they work really hard and they love to compete."
They also remain unknown variables. The Orioles appear ready to ride their young stars deep into the postseason, but the Padres traded a number of their best prospects to accelerate their contention window. Meanwhile, all the Blue Jays have to show for their explosive young core is an 0-6 record in the wild-card round since 2020.
So while there are no guarantees, the Red Sox have left themselves few options except to hope the young guns deliver in a big way.
"It's definitely exciting and it's an honor to be talked about like that, but at the end of the day, we haven't done anything," Mayer said. "We're here in a rookie development camp trying to get better and in order for that to become a reality, we know that we have to work extremely hard and work together."