The Farm is Rising, Featuring Eric Cross

Welcome back to The Red Seat Podcast, episode number 291. This week, Jake Devereaux and Bob Osgood are joined by an old friend of the show, Eric Cross. Eric is the co-host of the Toolshed Podcast, who writes about fantasy baseball for FTN Fantasy and RotoBaller and can be followed @EricCross04 on Twitter. He is also a lifelong Red Sox fan and prospect guru.

We opened the show by continuing last week’s discussion about some of the fallout from the trade deadline, which led into an embarrassing sweep at home to the Toronto Blue Jays over the weekend. Is this team officially dead in the water for the 2023 season, and is the roster construction, injuries, or lack of action at the trade deadline to blame?

Trevor Story and Chris Sale will be activated in the coming days for the season's stretch run. We discussed how both players have looked in their rehab stints and wondered where the urgency was for Trevor Story to return over the last week.

Eric gave us an overview of what he has seen from the farm system over the past year. Living near the Portland Sea Dogs stadium, he has gotten live looks at all of the upper minors Red Sox prospects.

Other topics include: Jarren Duran and where his value stands compared to the rest of the roster, whether Fangraphs rankings or a good major league roster are mutually exclusive, Kutter Crawford’s emergence as a reliable starter, Christian Arroyo clearing waivers, and whether Dinelson Lamet has anything left in the tank as a recent call-up in the Sox bullpen.

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