Red Sox first-round pick Jason Groome will make his professional debut Monday for the GCL Red Sox according to Ryan Hannable:
Red Sox first-rounder Jason Groome will indeed make pro debut Mon. in GCL, per sources. He'll start & be limited to 1-2 innings, 35 pitches.
— Ryan Hannable (@RyanHannable) August 18, 2016
Groome comes into his first game with more hype than any Red Sox first-round pick has had in a very long time, in no small part because he was thrown around as the first overall pick by plenty of sources not long before. Certainly, he was never expected to fall all the way to the Red Sox at #12 overall. Already he's taken over the #4 spot in Boston's farm system in the absence of Anderson Espinoza, with every indication that he would have made midseason top-100 lists with ease had he signed earlier.
Ultimately, what little pitching Groome does over these last couple weeks of the minor league season won't say much. Rookie performances are often unreliable, be they positive or negative, particularly in as small a sample size as he's going to have available to him. For as hyped as his arrival is, in reality it's going to be many long months before we start getting any real indication of what Jason Groome can do on the mound in professional baseball.
But it's the first step forward for an exciting new arm in the Red Sox' system, and so, certainly worth noting.