Red Sox Prospects with Baseball America’s Geoff Pontes

Welcome back to The Red Seat Podcast, episode #282. On this episode, Jake Devereaux, Keaton DeRocher, and Bob Osgood are joined by the great Geoff Pontes of Baseball America. Geoff is a prospect writer and podcaster, who has been able to get eyes on countless prospects as they’ve come through Worcester, Portland, the Cape League, and more. He will be on-site covering the MLB Draft for Baseball America in a few weeks, and you can follow him @GeoffPontesBA on Twitter.

We opened the show talking about Marcelo Mayer, who was promoted to Portland last week, and what type of player we should expect when he does reach Boston. Geoff got plenty of looks in the past couple of years at recent prospect grads Triston Casas and Brayan Bello, and we discussed what improvements are needed for each of them to take the leap in the Bigs.

We discussed Ceddanne Rafaela’s struggles with the bat and whether it matters if he plays 80-grade defense, Miguel Bleis’s upside, Shane Drohan’s velocity gains and where he fits into a rotation down the line, and how Nick Yorke compares to those who were picked right after him in the 2020 draft. Geoff gave his upside and floor thoughts on emerging lower-level prospects like Luis Perales, CJ Liu, and Isaac Coffey, and how they rank compared to some of this year’s disappointing arms at Worcester, like Bryan Mata, Chris Murphy, and Brandon Walter.

We wrapped things up talking about the upcoming MLB Draft, where Geoff gave us some of his favorite targets for the Red Sox at Pick #14 (and even #50 and #83), as well as what it’s like to cover the Draft and Futures Game.

If you have a question for an upcoming Red Seat pod, you can email us at redseatpodcast@gmail.com or tweet us. Jake is @DevJake, Keaton is @TheSpokenKeats and Bob is @BobOsgood15.