Red Sox Announce Roman Anthony Decision After 1-for-17 Slump

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The Boston Red Sox announced a decision involving Roman Anthony after the star outfielder endured a 1-for-17 slump at the plate.

The Boston Red Sox finished off a four-game sweep of the Orioles in Baltimore Sunday with a 3-1 win that let them hold on to a six-game cushion in the American League wild-card race with 18 games left to play.

The Red Sox play the first three of those final 18 games against the Los Angeles Angels, the team that at 54-89 holds the worst record in MLB.

Before the series got underway with a Labor Day matinee at Fenway Park, the Red Sox announced a decision on how they would use their most promising young hitter.

Roman Anthony will remain in the leadoff spot in the Boston Red Sox batting order Monday, even after an 0-for-13 skid over his last three games, and a 1-for-17 slump in the four games against the Orioles.

Interim manager Chad Tracy isn’t blinking, betting that Anthony’s on-base skills and long track record outweigh a cold week as Boston chases a wild-card spot.

The second-year outfielder’s return from injury has had two distinct chapters. In his first days back, Anthony looked every bit the hitter Boston expected, part of an extra-innings win on Aug. 31. Then the team traveled to Baltimore.

Anthony opened that four-game series with a solo homer on Sept. 3, then vanished at the plate. He struck out once and walked once in an 0-for-4 on Sept. 4, struck out three times in an 0-for-5 on Sept. 5, and closed the set 0-for-4 with two strikeouts and a walk on Sept. 6 — six strikeouts and zero hits across those final three games. His season slash line now sits at .243/.355/.382 in 38 games.

Red Sox Watch Roman Anthony’s Strikeouts Pile Up

The strikeouts aren’t something new for the 22-year-old. Anthony has struck out in 27.1 percent of his 472 MLB career plate appearances, including a 27.7 percent rate as a rookie during his 2025 debut season. His 2026 rate, before the injury, actually sat a shade lower, at 26.0 percent.

Since being activated off the 60-day injured list on Aug. 30, Anthony has struck out 11 times in 39 plate appearances, a rate closer to 28 percent — with six of those coming in his last three games alone. His walk rate, though, has remained solid at 14.2 percent this season, in line with his career mark of 13.6 percent.

Tracy has watched Anthony grind through a slump before.

“It’s not a Roman thing, right? As a group, we have some guys going through it,” Tracy said in May, as quoted by the Boston Globe that week, when an earlier cold stretch drew the same lineup questions.

Anthony was equally blunt about that stretch.

“I’m not hitting. It’s obvious, right?” he said, as quoted by MassLive.

Boston made Anthony a second-round pick out of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2022, and less than three years later he arrived in the majors before a left oblique strain cut his rookie season short. This year has demanded more patience than production. Tracy is still writing Anthony’s name at the top of the lineup card anyway — a bet that the hitter from last August, not the one from this September, is the real one.

Red Sox Take Aim at Angels Amid Wild-Card Race

Boston enters Monday at 79-65, third in the American League East, riding a four-game winning streak after sweeping Baltimore over the weekend. The Red Sox sit 6 1/2 games behind Tampa Bay in the division, and 2 1/2 back of the New York Yankees in the race for the top AL wild-card seeding.

The Los Angeles Angels arrive last in the AL West at 54-89, having dropped 11 of their last 13 games and five straight series. Boston already handled this matchup once, sweeping a three-game set in Anaheim in July.

Right-hander Brayan Bello, making his first start since early June after a summer in relief, takes the mound for Boston against Angels right-hander Grayson Rodriguez.

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