The team’s President of Baseball Operations, Paul Toboni, vowed to build ❝a player development monster❞ were his exact words, to describe the creation of a comprehensive, data-driven, culture-focused system for acquiring players — and then developing them into top-tier talent. You do that with having the right people in the front office, player development, and coaching system within the right infrastructure.

A source told us that Toboni respects players with top prospect and first round pedigree, but that should not drive a development system. In fact, that source told us that Toboni and his staff plan on having an early camp for a subset of minor leaguers at the West Palm Beach facility. What that entails hasn’t been fully ironed out yet, but should be large enough to create two teams from that subset. Don’t expect 165 minor leaguers — but maybe 50ish.

If you look at the Boston Red Sox top prospects from last year, you start to see that most of them were not first round pedigree as you will see (listed below) that they were acquired under Toboni and Devin Pearson, and most of them were acquired while Justin Horowitz was working with them at the Boston Red Sox. These were the top prospects before the 2025 season, and after the package of players including Kyle Teel was traded for Garrett Crochet.

1 Roman Anthony 2nd round pick 2022
2 Kristian Campbell 4th round pick 2023
3 Marcelo Mayer 1st round pick 2021
4 Luis Perales International free agent 2019
5 Franklin Arias International free agent 2023
6 Mikey Romero 1st round pick 2022
7 Juan Valera International free agent 2023
8 David Sandlin 11th round pick by the Royals, and acquired in a 2024 trade
9 Yoeilin Cespedes International free agent 2023
10 Connelly Early 5th round pick 2023
11 Richard Fitts 6th round pick by the Yankees, and acquired in a 2023 trade
12 Hunter Dobbins 9th round pick 2021
13 Payton Tolle 2nd round pick 2024

What you see in that bakers dozen list is that 84.6 percent of all of those prospects were acquired directly by the Red Sox. Four of the 13 players were acquired directly from the international draft. Only two of the 13 players (15.4 percent) were first round draft picks, and Romero was the 24th player selected in that draft class of 2022. The only player drafted in the Top-23 was Mayer at 4th overall.

Here is another fact about Anthony. He was the 79th pick in that 2022 draft in which the Red Sox had a second round pick before him. Anthony’s rookie season was a breakout before he was injured with 71 games and a +3.1 bWAR. He batted .292 with an .859 OPS. Drafted out of high school, he debuted at the age of 21.

Much of the hype was about Mayer who had a significant wrist injury after his debut, and the wrist required surgery. He still put up a .674 OPS in limited action. Evaluators loved the Red Sox farm system and Baseball America put them at No. 1 to start the season.

When I evaluate a first round talent, I look for a player with no major flaws, and development time will get them to their potential. In the second round, you can take on some flaws as long as the main tools are there. You are looking for more fixable flaws. As you go on in the latter rounds of the draft, you are still looking for tools. You hope that better coaching and some tweaks will find those diamonds in the rough. Most amateur players don’t have great coaching. This is how you turn those 2nd round picks like in the case of Anthony, that 29 teams passed on him twice between the first and second rounds before the Red Sox scooped him up. Some teams picked three players before Anthony was drafted.

Expect the Red Sox way to work with the Nationals. No favoritism for first round picks. Let the creme rise to the top regardless of draft status or internationals bonus money. That should be great news for most of the minor league prospects, especially because there are few first rounders still viable beyond Eli Willits, Seaver King, and Caleb Lomavita.

The former administration never seemed to want a first rounder to fail. They put extra resources into 2022 first rounder, 5th overall pick, Elijah Green, the past two seasons, even going as far as to secretly leave him on the Single-A roster while moving him to West Palm Beach. Two years in a row we exposed what the prior administration was doing.

Green wasn’t officially placed on the Florida Complex League roster until June 14, 2025 which was 27 days after we tweeted that he had left his High-A Wilmington team. Green is a wonderful young man from all reports we have received. He didn’t ask for any of this. The bosses at the time did this, and we exposed what they were doing in 2025 as well as 2024 when he disappeared from his Fredericksburg Single-A team for several weeks before he was placed on the IL. Hopefully Toboni and his staff won’t be manipulating players like this.

If you make a mistake in drafting or acquiring a player, move on. Don’t put extra resources and dishonest tactics in-place. Players should be treated the same regardless of draft position or signing bonus paid. Again, let the creme rise to the top.

Both Nick Yorke and Jay Groome might be great examples of Red Sox first rounders who the team moved away from after their stock was falling. Groome was a top prospect who fell quickly out of the Top-100. Both players were traded to other teams when their production was sliding in the wrong direction. Internally, you have to be your own best evaluators of the team’s talent.

Since Toboni acquired Perales from the Red Sox for Jake Bennett, you hope that Toboni felt he was getting the better end of that trade since he knew Perales well. Now Toboni and his staff must get to know their 165 minor leaguers in their US facilities. If they can replicate what they did in Boston, and get the Nats to the No. 1 farm system, that would be progress.

Some of those names on the Red Sox top prospects list had jumped up the list because of their development system. This is what we need to see happen with some of the Nats highly touted prospects where you could pick many names like Cristhian Vaquero, nicknamed “The Phenomenon”, based on his high status as an international free agent.

Look at the Nats Top-30 prospects per MLB Pipeline. There are far too many names and multi-million signing bonuses that have paid to players who are off that list. Armando Cruz and Victor Hurtado are just two more names that were supposed be can’t miss. Cruz was paid $3.9 million in a bonus, and the Nats pour more money into their international players than they do with draft picks beyond the initial bonuses. The only international player in Nats history to become an All-Star was Juan Soto. That is it.

Toboni said that his coaching and development staffs are already at work setting priority goals, systematically identifying and tackling them one by one. Our source named David Longley and John Wulf, along with Mike DeBartolo as key people in that process. Longley is the Director of Player Development Tech and Strategy, Wulf is the Asst. Director of Player Development, and DeBartolo was the interim-GM and now the Senior VP of Player Operations.

Toboni added that improvement won’t just happen by accident — it will be the product of excellent planning, thoughtful collaboration and diligent execution. So Toboni isn’t counting on luck. His team plans on building it the right way that can ultimately drive sustainable winning.