NEW YORK -- The Red Sox have removed Roman Anthony from their AL wild-card series roster after imaging Wednesday showed "additional damage to some muscles" in his right hand and wrist a month after he returned from an injury in the area, manager Chad Tracy said before Game 2 against the Yankees.
Boston replaced Anthony with infielder Curtis Mead. The Red Sox acquired Mead from the Washington Nationals for left-hander Connelly Early on July 25. He fractured his left wrist when he was hit by a pitch in his first game with the team and hasn't played since.
Anthony started Game 1 for Boston as its designated hitter and leadoff hitter. He struck out in two at-bats against Cam Schlittler -- both on checked swings -- before Andruw Monasterio pinch hit for him with the Red Sox trailing 2-0 in the sixth inning. After the 9-0 loss, Tracy said that Anthony's hand "flared on him" and that he was too uncomfortable to continue hitting.
He was driven to Boston after the game to undergo tests Wednesday morning and was on his way back to New York to rejoin the team for Game 2.
"He's upset," Tracy said. "Mentally going through it, he wants to be out there. He wants to be out there with the guys."
Because Anthony was taken off the roster during the wild-card round, he won't be eligible to play in the AL Division Series if the Red Sox advance. The earliest Anthony would be eligible would be for the ALCS.
The injury surfaced after Anthony missed nearly five months this season with a partially torn tendon in a joint that connects his right ring finger to his wrist. He tore the tendon on a check-swing foul ball May 4 and missed 101 games before returning Aug. 30.
"We went to reimage it because we felt like this was something that, with a couple check swings, it got worse," Tracy said. "And they found just additional stuff to other areas of the wrist."
Anthony, 22, was one of the few bright spots down the stretch for a Boston offense that scored the fewest runs in the majors in September, batting .262 with four home runs and a .797 OPS in 25 games. He finished the season with a .245 batting average, five home runs and a .735 OPS in 55 games.
Now, for the second straight year, he is sidelined for the wild-card series against the Yankees. Last year, Anthony, the consensus top prospect in baseball when he made his major league debut in June 2025, suffered an oblique injury in early September and missed the remainder of the season as the Red Sox fell in three games to New York.
"Obviously, everything he's gone through this year, dealing with these different things, it's tough for him," Tracy said. "So there's no question from anybody on our side of things, like, we love the kid, love the player. Fantastic player. He's just dealt with hardships this year, and this is the next in line of that. But he wants to be out there with the guys, and he would if he could."
