How Red Sox's Top Prospects Fared In Worcester's Opening Series
· Yahoo Sports
The Triple-A season officially began over the weekend and we got our first look at the roster Worcester will be showing off to start the season.
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The team is looking a bit different this year compared to last season, as there was plenty of hype around top prospects Roman Anthony and Marcelo Mayer on the Opening Day roster for the WooSox. This season, the team has two top-10 prospects in the organization on the roster and they are both pitchers: Payton Tolle and Jake Bennett.
Opening weekend saw Worcester trot out three arms to start who are all on the 40-man roster.
Jake Bennett got the start on Friday and threw three innings of shutout baseball that included only allowing two hits, no walks, and five strikeouts. The Oklahoma product topped out at 95.1 mph on his fastball and averaged 93.4 mph over his outing. It was a planned shorter outing for Bennett, as he is still being ramped up in the cold weather to start the season.
On Saturday, Worcester turned to Tyler Uberstine to start and he threw four innings and gave up one run, two hits, one walk, and struck out three batters. Temperatures at first pitch were hovering around 30 degrees, but the cold weather didn't seem to affect him as he told me pregame he was "used to the cold in Chicago" after playing his college baseball at Northwestern. Manager Chad Tracy noted after the game that Uberstine is being closely watched by the organization and was in strong consideration to make the MLB opening day roster as a bullpen arm.
The team turned to top pitching prospect Payton Tolle on Sunday, who threw four innings and gave up four runs, five hits, two walks, and struck out six batters. The box score wasn't what Tolle was looking for, but he topped out at 97.9 mph and collected eleven whiffs over the shortened outing. The Oklahoma native had been working on fine-tuning his secondaries as he works his way back up to the big league club.
The three starts are positive first looks at the starting pitching depth the organization has stacked up behind Boston's six starters currently on the roster. As we saw in 2025, the Red Sox had to turn to two rookies in Connelly Early and Tolle. If the same situation arises in 2026, they could be turning to this trio of arms to get the job done.
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