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Red Sox promote Sam Travis to Double-A Portland

And suddenly Portland is an interesting baseball team.

By Ben Buchanan

Following close behind teammate Manuel Margot, Red Sox first baseman and 2014 second round draft pick Sam Travis is making the move from High-A Salem to Double-A Portland according to Alex Speier:

Travis is something of an oddity for the Red Sox farm system. While a few players spring to mind--Anthony Rizzo and Lars Anderson to pick out two names whose Red Sox stories are depressing for entirely different reasons--Boston generally doesn't develop many interesting first basemen. This is in no small part because they also do not pick them highly, preferring players whose bats don't have to work out quite so completely to be valuable at the major league level. In fact, before Travis, Rizzo himself was the last first baseman they had drafted in even just the first six rounds.

But they broke the mold with Travis, and so far that decision seems to be paying off. Speier already noted his solid performance above, with the first baseman having made the Carolina League All-Star team after leading said league in hits in the first half. That's despite a very slow start to the season, with Travis having earned his promotion with a ridiculous .406/.474/.638 performance in June. If the season line as a whole isn't quite in that stratospheric region that no-glove, corner infield/outfield phenom prospects tend to inhabit, that last month is.

With the transfer of their two best prospects to Double-A, suddenly Salem is left as the odd man out in Boston's farm system. A situation that might not change anytime soon with the best names in Low-A Greenville not performing nearly so well as their High-A-turned-Double-A counterparts.

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