{"id":114104,"date":"2026-02-14T17:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T22:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=114104"},"modified":"2026-02-14T17:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T22:24:09","slug":"team-usa-adds-red-sox-star-for-world-baseball-classic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2026\/02\/14\/team-usa-adds-red-sox-star-for-world-baseball-classic\/","title":{"rendered":"Team USA Adds Red Sox Star for World Baseball Classic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Boston Red Sox rising star Roman Anthony<\/a> has been selected as an injury replacement to represent Team USA in the World Baseball Classic. This is coming up in about two 1\/2 weeks. The young left fielder made his debut in early June last season and was immediately a standout for the eventual Wild Card team. In 71 games, he batted .292, had an OPS of .853, and 29 extra base hits. He was a huge part of why the Red Sox got to where they were. <\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, on September 3rd, he suffered a left oblique strain. This sidelined him for the rest of the year, which led to him being out for the Wild Card series against the rival Yankees. He could be a huge factor for this year\u2019s USA team, however. With more games early on, though, his health is always a factor too, as is anyone who plays extra games outside the regular season.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How Did Roman Get The Chance?\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n

This past Wednesday, Arizona Diamondbacks star left fielder Corbin Carroll<\/a> broke the hamate bone in his right hand when he fouled off a pitch in batting practice. This rare injury also occurred to Francisco Lindor<\/a> and Jackson Holliday<\/a> as well.\u00a0 The injury <\/span>will keep Carroll out 4-6 weeks.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This will not only keep him out of the WBC, but very well could stop him from playing on Opening Day as well. This led Team USA manager Mark DeRosa<\/a> to start looking for a replacement. They looked at players such as Steven Kwan<\/a> and Riley Greene<\/a> before picking Anthony.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What Does Anthony Add to Team USA?\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n

The tricky part when comparing Anthony to Carroll is that Carroll played twice as many games. So naturally, his statistics are better than Anthony’s. However, they can be compared on a 162-game pace. While Corbin is definitely the faster player (41 stolen bases and 14 triples compared to 9 SB\u2019s and 2 triples), Roman would hit more doubles (41 compared to 31). Now, granted, this is probably due to Fenway\u2019s Green Monster. <\/span><\/p>\n

Advanced metrics show that Anthony puts the ball in play more than Carroll did this past season. While Carroll barely got above the league average (.292), Anthony crushed it, with a .404 BAbip. Anthony\u2019s walk percentage was also higher, meaning he\u2019s more patient at the plate. However, his strikeout percentage was higher than Carroll\u2019s (27.7% compared to 23.8%). This might seem weird for a player who played in half the games as Carroll did. In a short time span, though, Anthony should be fine. His ability to get on base can help produce or drive in runs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Roman Anthony\u2019s Health Status<\/b><\/h2>\n

Despite being injured in September and put on the 10-day IL, Anthony was ready to go by about Thanksgiving. The MLB season was far over by then, as was the Red Sox’s season a month and a half before. He had said that watching the playoffs at the rehab center and at home was killing him<\/a>. By January, he was completely healed and good to go. So, needless to say, he\u2019ll be ready to go in early March.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Main Photo Credit: Eric Canha-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boston Red Sox rising star Roman Anthony has been selected as an injury replacement to represent Team USA in the World Baseball Classic. This is coming up in about two 1\/2 weeks. The young left fielder made his debut in early June last season and was immediately a standout for the eventual Wild Card team. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5767,"featured_media":105610,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1071,4,35],"tags":[2670,380,5780,2634,28596,5613],"class_list":["post-114104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb","category-redsox","category-news","tag-corbin-carroll","tag-francisco-lindor","tag-jackson-holliday","tag-riley-greene","tag-roman-anthony","tag-steven-kwan"],"modified_by":"Augustus Oswald, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5767"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114104"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114120,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114104\/revisions\/114120"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}