I wrote this whole post in the Yamamoto thread without realizing it was closed, I'm dumb. But I think it makes sense in here.
There is no real precedent of any pitcher costing two prospects of Mayer and Anthony's pedigree. I also think the "total lack of pitching" in the farm system is overblown. This is a bit of a grey period for pitching prospect development. There were only 3 pitchers younger than 26 in MLB last year that achieved 3 fWAR and the "top" pitching prospects have significant warts. Skenes is the best pitching prospect in baseball by a mile and he just went number 1 overall. There isn't a single other pitcher in pipeline's top 20. The second highest rated pitcher, Kyle Harrison, cant throw strikes. The third, Andrew Painter, just had TJS.
To give some context. Here are the teams who have multiple top 100 pipeline pitching prospects in their stable:
Braves - Smith-Shawver (53), Waldrep (100)
Dodgers - Frasso (65), Stone (79)
Phillies - Painter (28), Abel (45)
Pirates - Skenes (3), Jones (69), Solometo (84)
Padres - Snelling (60), Lesko (63), Thorpe (99)
Giants - Harrison (20), Whisenhunt (70)
That's it. 10 other teams lack a top 100 pitching prospect.
Pitching development has evolved significantly over the past 5 years. The number of pitchers taken in the first round of the MLB draft has dropped every year for 4 straight drafts and the most successful organizations at developing young pitching are taking a lot of mid round college pitchers and seeing who can stay healthy. The sox system isn't strong in pitching, for sure, but their top 5 (Gonzales, Fitts, Perales, Bastardo, Monegro) are all on positive development paths and all five will likely be in AA or above by the end of this year and 4 of the 5 will be 22 or younger. That's extremely young for pitching these days. Pepiot, for example, will turn 27 in August. 27 year old Nick Yorke is probably in his arb years. The Red Sox in 2023 got 7.29 fWAR by graduated pitching prospects age 27 or younger. That's the 9th most in MLB (average per team 5.6).
I'm meandering a bit but the point is this - we don't actually know where the sox pitching development is yet because pitchers develop later. In MLB last year these are the players who were 25 or younger who pitched 75+ innings as a starter and had an FIP < 4.00.
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So I get that people are frustrated by the lack of pitching prospects and frustrated by the lack of pitching in general but its a sport wide issue right now and while I'd put the sox organization in the bottom half of the league, I don't see it as dire as other people in this thread because the context of the league as a whole shows that pitching has changed significantly over the past 5 years and context is extremely important. I think a lot of people are comparing the Red Sox current state of pitching as an organization to an ideal that doesn't exist.