Red Sox May Have Found A Steal In Nationals Trade, Per Top Talent Evaluator

As a Major League Baseball team, it's exciting to have a reputation for improving young pitchers.

Since Craig Breslow took over as chief baseball officer prior to last season, the Boston Red Sox have drafted and developed pitching quickly and at a high level. As lefties Payton Tolle and Connelly Early are getting ready to graduate from prospect status, it appears Breslow has found a new pet project.

Some Red Sox fans were dismayed to see Boston trade hard-throwing 22-year-old righty Luis Perales to the Washington Nationals on Monday night for 25-year-old lefty Jake Bennett. But one industry expert believes Bennett fits the Breslow mould perfectly.

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How Jake Bennett could take off in Boston

On Monday, Keith Law of The Athletic, one of the most respected top prospect evaluators in the sport, praised both Breslow and former Red Sox assistant general manager Paul Toboni, the new president of baseball operations in Washington, for their reasoning behind the move.

"Bennett’s a back-end starter — but despite being 6-foot-6 and 240 pounds or so, he’s never worked on trying to add velocity, nor has anyone tried to improve either of the breaking pitches (in the modern sense of pitch design, at least)," wrote Law.

"The Red Sox have done a lot of this with a lot of guys, including a couple of lefties who will figure into their 2026 rotation plans in Payton Tolle and Connelly Early. Bennett will probably start in Triple A, where he has yet to pitch in any season, but I expect him to get a call-up at some point this summer when Boston needs a starter, and I won’t be shocked if he’s throwing harder when he does."

First, a moment for the poor Nationals fans who have had to suffer through whatever has been going on in that club's front office and player development pipeline over the last half-decade. Thank goodness Toboni came along to help them out of their rut.

Bennett already excels at strike-throwing, which may be an underrated skill for a prospect at this point. He's got the physique of Tolle, but from a player profile, may be more similar to Early before the start of this past season.

The Red Sox saw a side-by-side comparison of Bennett and Perales in this year's Arizona Fall League. No one was forcing them to cut ties with the latter, so clearly they thought there was something about the former that could help their chances at contention this year.

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