Yes, the Red Sox plan to explore a long-term deal with lefthander Garrett Crochet this offseason, and yes, Crochet is open to that conversation. But he’s not the only player with whom the Red Sox are likely to pursue discussions about an extended stay in Boston.
While the acquisition of Crochet from the White Sox in a Winter Meetings trade represented the team’s most aggressive roster-building move in years, it was driven in part by the proximity of an elite group of prospects to the big leagues.
Even as the Sox work to round out their roster to contend in 2025 — efforts that they acknowledged as “incomplete” at Saturday’s Fenway Fest — they’re also looking to not only unseal the window of competitiveness but to keep it wide open for years to come.
They believe the coming wave of young talent in the organization — spearheaded by top prospects Roman Anthony, Kristian Campbell, and Marcelo Mayer, all of whom will be in Boston this week for the Rookie Development Program — has a chance to do just that. The pursuit of long-term deals for talented players — even before they reach the big leagues — represents a likely pursuit in the coming months.
“We’re set now with that group for the foreseeable future. That was the goal: To get us into this position, where we’ve got a sustainable group that can be competitive year-in, year-out as we go forward,” team CEO/president Sam Kennedy said on NESN on Saturday. “There’s a plan for a lot of our guys internally to try and extend. That’s something that’s really important for great organizations.
“In our 24 years, there’s been really important internal extensions that have led to World Series championships. That is a goal and a priority with respect to [Crochet] but also to other guys in our organization.”
Long-term deals for players with little or no big league service time have become more common across the game in recent years. Last April, the Red Sox signed Ceddanne Rafaela to an eight-year, $50 million deal when he had barely 100 big league plate appearances.
In March 2023, the Diamondbacks signed Corbin Carroll — a big league call-up in September 2022, whom they’d already identified as the foundation of their roster — to an eight-year, $111 million deal in spring training, at a time when the outfielder ranked as the No. 2 prospect in baseball. That deal not only gave Arizona, which made a surprising run to the World Series in 2023, led by Carroll in a year when he was named Rookie of the Year, its centerpiece but also made it easier to move aggressively to strike other long-term deals, most recently with the unexpected six-year, $210 million deal for Corbin Burnes.
“No regrets,” Diamondbacks GM Mike Hazen said earlier this offseason of the Carroll deal. “I think adding long-term stability onto our roster, especially for a player like [Carroll], is very helpful for us. It’s extremely valuable. It’s not a variable that I have to juggle anytime soon. Anytime you can focus what you’re exactly trying to shoot at in terms of needs, pinpointing down what you’re doing, I think we have you get an opportunity to be more focused as you go through future offseasons.”
Last winter, the Brewers signed Jackson Chourio — then the consensus No. 2 prospect in baseball — to an eight-year, $82 million deal before he’d spent a day in the big leagues.
“I’m super-thrilled we have him,” Brewers GM Matt Arnold said earlier this winter. “I think those are very unique cases. It doesn’t happen every day and you have to be very thoughtful around those types of investments.”
Those deals offer frameworks for the Sox in potential conversations with their top prospects. The team, according to multiple sources, is interested in exploring the possibility of long-term deals with players in that group, and for good reason.
Anthony, who doesn’t turn 21 until May, hit .291/.396/.498 with 18 homers in the upper levels of the minors last year, including a .344/.463/.519 line in 35 games after an August promotion to Triple-A Worcester, emerging as Baseball America’s top prospect by the end of the year.
Campbell, a fourth-round pick in 2023, was a revelation.
In his first full pro season, he was recognized as Baseball America’s Minor League Player of the Year in 2024 after hitting .330/.439/.558 with 20 homers and 24 steals across three levels.
Mayer hit .307/.370/.480 with 36 extra-base hits in 77 games in Double-A Portland before a season-ending lower back injury — rare offensive production for a player seen by most as a solid defensive shortstop. (Sox manager Alex Cora said Mayer will likely get looks at short, second, and third in spring training.) Though the injuries that have limited his game experience might put him behind Anthony and Campbell in big league proximity (and thus as a priority for a long-term deal), he joins them as one of the top prospects in the minors.
At least one member of that group is very open to a long-term deal.
“One-hundred percent,” Campbell, who is seen as the likeliest to open 2025 in the big leagues, given his positional versatility and righthandedness, said last season of his openness to a long-term deal. “This is definitely an organization I would love to be with for a long period of time. It’s a conversation definitely to have, and I would definitely be open to that.”
Anthony is likewise seen as willing to at least listen if the Sox approach him about a long-term deal before he reaches the big leagues.
To date, there haven’t been conversations between the team and those young players about long-term deals. But the team’s hope is that the coming days, when its top prospects will be at Fenway, will represent not only a harbinger of big league debuts in 2025 but of an emerging core that can remain together for years to come.
“It’s something that I think we missed on over the last five or six years if I’m being honest — maybe even going back eight years when you think about Mookie [Betts] and Xander [Bogaerts] and some of these guys that you’d like to have gotten long, long-term deals done with,” Kennedy said on NESN. “It’s not that we didn’t try. We just didn’t get there. We learned from that, because we need to have this core group of young talented players be a part of the Red Sox for the next decade.”
Alex Speier can be reached at alex.speier@globe.com. Follow him @alexspeier.
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