‘Physical specimen’ among influx of Red Sox prospects with legit right-handed home run power

· Yahoo Sports

First baseman Willson Contreras is on pace to become the 21st Red Sox right-handed hitter since 2007 to hit 20 or more home runs in a season.

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Only seven of those 21 hitters have been homegrown players.

It’s no secret the Red Sox have had some difficulty developing right-handed power hitters, resulting in the front office going outside the organization to fill that need.

But that narrative might be changing. Boston has nine prospects with 10 or more home runs so far during the first half of the 2026 minor league season. Six of them — Franklin Arias, Johanfran Garcia, Yoeilin Cespedes, Jack Winnay, Brooks Brannon and Luke Heyman — are right-handed.

Arias, who Baseball America ranks No. 7 on its Top 100 list, leads all Red Sox minor leaguers with 14 home runs for Double-A Portland.

Justin Gonzales — Boston’s No. 3 prospect who at 6-foot-6, 260 pounds has been described as “a physical specimen” and “big unit” — is about to reach double digits. The 19-year-old right-handed hitter ranks No. 85 on Baseball America’s Top 100 list and has nine home runs in 55 games for High-A Greenville.

Henry Godbout, a 2025 second-round draft pick, likely would have had 10 or more home runs had he not broken his left hand in late May. He had seven homers in 34 games for Greenville before the injury. Godbout said he’s certain he can develop into a 30-home run hitter.

The influx of young right-handed hitting talent is a promising development for the Red Sox. Right-handed hitters who pull the ball in the air can take advantage of Fenway Park’s Green Monster, which sits just 310 feet down the left-field line.

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Fenway Park is the major league venue with the most pulled doubles by right-handed hitters (1,753) since 2008. Fenway also has the second-highest slugging percentage (.751) among active major league parks for right-handed hitters pulling the ball from 2008-26. Sutter Health Park — a Triple-A stadium in Sacramento that’s the temporary home of the Athletics — is the only active park with a higher slugging percentage (.777).

MassLive ran a four-part series earlier this year on the Red Sox’ hitting and pitching approach and Driveline Baseball’s influence.

In the series, senior director of player development Brian Abraham told MassLive: “If you take the majority of at-bats and kind of put them all together, I think generally speaking, pulling the ball in the air hard is a thing that leads to extra-base hits, which ultimately leads to runs, which ultimately leads to wins.”

Driveline Baseball founder Kyle Boddy, a former advisor to chief baseball officer Craig Breslow, said back then: “We do prioritize what Ted Williams prioritized first, which is hit the ball in the air and pull it. That’s the best thing. Data shows it. The Green Monster is there. And more importantly, it is what works.”

The development staff has put a heavy focus on right-handed power hitters pulling the ball in the air.

Garcia, who has 11 home runs in 40 games for Portland, “seems driven to launch pull-side moon shots,” according to his pre-2026 Baseball America scouting report.

But there are other Red Sox right-handed power prospects like Brannon who naturally use the opposite field more often.

As Brannon said recently, “Pulling the ball in the air is absolutely the most valuable outcome that you can possibly have. And it’s a premium and it is something that I have not done particularly well in the past. And we’ve focused a lot in the training environments on pulling the ball in the air quite a bit more.”

While the Red Sox are putting a focus on pulling the ball hard in the air, they also don’t want right-handed hitters to veer away from hitting the ball to the opposite field, especially if that’s a strength.

“The way I like to view it is that each player has like a toolbox, and in that toolbox are certain tools,” Portland hitting coach Trevor Burmeister said. “So we want to polish and make those tools as useful as possible. There’s some environments that we’ll put the guys in where the objective is air pull, because we’re just trying to refine that movement pattern that allows that to happen. The trickiest part though, and what we really focus on here is, when the game starts, how do we marry an approach that allows that to show up naturally?

“And part of that is what is the arsenal of the pitcher that they’re facing? Where’s the zone that we’re hunting?” Burmeister added. “Part of it is being on time. And then a huge part of it is — when you earn your advantage counts, then how do we get that tool out of the toolbox and where do we need that pitch to be so that we can take advantage of the slug to the pull side?"

Red Sox right-handed hitting prospects to watchHomersGamesTeamFranklin Arias1458PortlandJohanfran Garcia1141PortlandJack Winnay 1157Greenville/PortlandYoeilin Cespedes11 57GreenvilleBrooks Brannon1041PortlandLuke Heyman1056Salem/GreenvilleJustin Gonzales 955GreenvilleFranklin Primera829Florida Complex LeagueEnddy Azocar859Salem/GreenvilleHenry Godbout734Greenville
  • Red Sox homegrown right-handed hitters with 20+ home run seasons since 2007: Kevin Youkilis, Dustin Pedroia, Mookie Betts, Hanley Ramirez*, Xander Bogaerts, Christian Vazquez, Bobby Dalbec
  • Other Red Sox right-handed hitters with 20+ home run seasons since 2007: Mike Lowell, Manny Ramirez, Jason Bay, Adrian Beltre, Cody Ross, Mike Napoli, J.D. Martinez, Hunter Renfroe, Kiké Hernandez, Justin Turner, Adam Duvall, Tyler O’Neill, Trevor Story, Willson Contreras*
  • * Ramirez came up through the Red Sox system before being traded to the Marlins for Josh Beckett in November 2005. The Red Sox re-acquired him in free agency before the 2015 season. * Contreras is on pace for 34 home runs. * This list is also exclusively players who hit from the left side. Switch-hitters Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Victor Martinez also hit 20+ homers in a season.

The work done in training environments and batting cages helps hitters identify when the best time is to hit the ball to the pull side.

“When you’re facing a pitcher that has, let’s say, a fastball, slider, a sweeper and all these different pitches, it can be not the most ideal thing to go up to the plate and just look to pull, pull, pull,” Burmeister said. “But can we put ourselves in a position to be on time to where when the mistake is made, we have the solution to get to that pitch to do damage to the pull side.”

While Garcia is a natural pull hitter, there are conversations with him on when is the best time to do damage to the pull side. The development staff has talked with him about taking advantage of advantage counts and hunting a certain area of the strike zone.

The Red Sox have encouraged Garcia, when he gets to two strikes and he’s at a disadvantage to look to use right-center field so that he has more plate coverage while also still looking for breaking balls closer to him and laying off pitches away and off the plate that pitchers are looking for him to chase.

“All the guys can get to the pull-side air, but it’s not something that’s overly forced,” Burmeister said. “It’s about approach. It’s about plan. It’s about knowing how this pitch is going to move to get it to the spot to where I can take advantage of that, especially in an advantage count. So we’ve been really having a lot of conversations with how do we get these skill sets that we work so hard on in the cage to show up in the game when you’re facing a specific arsenal or a pitcher or depending on what the count is. That’s the tricky part.”

“And all three of those guys (Arias, Brannon and Garcia) have done a phenomenal job of learning through this season, what is the approach that gets me there naturally, and then when I earn my advantage counts, what am I looking for? What zone am I looking for to where then I can get out front and get the ball to the air-side pull to do my damage?”

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