Henry Owens claimed off waivers by the Diamondbacks

In what is clearly the biggest news in the baseball world on Friday afternoon, the Red Sox lost one of their former top prospects to the Arizona Diamondbacks. Earlier in the week, we learned that Boston had placed Henry Owens on outright waivers in order to clear a 40-man roster spot. The hope, one would think, was that the team could possibly sneak the southpaw through waivers without being claimed, but that did not happen. Owens was claimed by Arizona on Friday.

Overall, this isn’t a huge loss to the Red Sox as they have some solid starting pitching depth in Triple-A for the moment. Still, it’s always sad to see the end of a run for a top prospect who just didn’t pan out. That’s exactly the case with Owens, who had so much potential after being drafted and showed plenty of flashes throughout his minor-league career. In the end, he just couldn’t harness his command and without that there is just no major-league future.

He’ll get a second chance with the Diamondbacks, though, and perhaps a change of scenery is exactly what the doctor ordered. It’s not clear right now what Arizona’s plan for Owens may be, but there’s probably not another organization who knows him better. The Diamondbacks’ General Manager, of course, is former Red Sox executive Mike Hazen. Hazen was with the team for most of Owens’ development. My guess is that they’ll give him another shot at starting this year with an eye towards transitioning him to relief if it doesn’t work out for the first half. Owens, still only 25 years old, has one minor-league option remaining.

Here’s hoping things work out for him in Arizona, because he’s quite a fun pitcher to watch when things are working correctly.