{"id":131862,"date":"2025-09-10T03:56:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T03:56:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/131862\/"},"modified":"2025-09-10T03:56:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T03:56:06","slug":"red-sox-promote-connelly-early-place-dustin-may-on-injured-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/131862\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Sox Promote Connelly Early, Place Dustin May On Injured List"},"content":{"rendered":"

5:50pm: Early\u2019s promotion is official. May lands on the 15-day IL, retroactive to September 6, with elbow neuritis. Boston created the necessary 40-man spot by recalling infielder\u00a0Vaughn Grissom<\/a> from Triple-A and placing him on the 60-day injured list. Grissom\u2019s season is over due to plantar fasciitis.<\/p>\n

10:46 am: The Red Sox will promote pitching prospect Connelly Early<\/a> to make his major league debut tonight versus the A\u2019s, as first reported by Foul Territory<\/a>. Katie Morrison-O\u2019Day of MassLive.com noted<\/a> earlier in this week that Early, a 2023 fifth-round pick, was scratched from his start at Triple-A Worcester because the Sox wanted him to be ready if the big league club had a need this week. MassLive\u2019s Chris Cotillo wrote yesterday<\/a> that Early was \u201cvery much in play\u201d to make his MLB debut within the next couple of days.<\/p>\n

Early isn\u2019t on the 40-man roster, so Boston will need to make corresponding transactions to open space on both the active and 40-man rosters. Righty Dustin May<\/a> will head to the injured list to open an active roster spot, per Foul Territory and Cotillo.<\/p>\n

The 23-year-old Early has thrived in both Double-A and Triple-A this season, combining for 100 1\/3 innings with a 2.60 earned run average, a huge 31.9% strikeout rate and a 9.7% walk rate. The 6\u20193\u2033, 195-pound lefty is sitting 93.4 mph on his four-seamer, complementing the pitch with a deep variety of secondary offerings including a slider, changeup, sinker, cutter and curveball (listed in descending order of usage rate). He\u2019s kept the ball on the ground at a strong 50% clip and has thus far posted an excellent 14.3% swinging-strike between Double-A and Triple-A.<\/p>\n

Early entered the season ranked tenth among Boston prospects at Baseball America but has climbed to sixth, even after the draft added several new entrants to the top tiers of every system in the sport. Scouting reports at BA, FanGraphs and MLB.com tout Early\u2019s changeup as a plus offering. There\u2019s a wider range of opinions on his slider, but the general consensus is that it at least has the potential to be an above-average, if not plus offering. The Virginia product will join fellow rookie Payton Tolle<\/a> as a fairly high-profile September addition who could not only help into and throughout the postseason but could very well be auditioning for a 2026 rotation spot.<\/p>\n

Although Early wasn\u2019t on the 40-man roster on Sept. 1, he\u2019ll still be eligible for postseason play. Players only need to be in the organization to have eligibility. The Sox will technically need to petition to have Early added to their postseason roster as an injury replacement, but teams do that every year. Depending on May\u2019s timetable, he could simply be added as a replacement for the same pitcher he\u2019s replacing on the active roster today.<\/p>\n

There was at least one scenario where the Red Sox wouldn\u2019t have had Early as an option to call up. When speaking with the Diamondbacks about Merrill Kelly<\/a> and Zac Gallen<\/a> prior to the trade deadline, Early was of interest to Arizona\u2019s front office, Alex Speier and Tim Healey of the Boston Globe report<\/a>. The Sox were willing to discuss lefty Brandon Clarke<\/a> but deemed Early too steep a price to pay in those talks, per the Globe duo. Kelly went to the Rangers for a package of three pitching prospects. Gallen stayed in Arizona and will likely receive a qualifying offer.<\/p>\n

As for May, it\u2019s not yet clear exactly what type of injury he\u2019s facing. Boston acquired him from the Dodgers at the trade deadline, sending 2024 first-round pick James Tibbs<\/a> III (whom they\u2019d acquired from the Giants for Rafael Devers<\/a>) back to Los Angeles in return.<\/p>\n

That trade hasn\u2019t gone at all as the Red Sox hoped. May has made six appearances, five of them starts, and pitched to an ugly 5.40 ERA with a lower strikeout rate (19.5%) and higher walk rate (9.8%) than he\u2019d logged in what was already a shaky season with Los Angeles (4.85 ERA). He\u2019s a free agent at season\u2019s end and doesn\u2019t necessarily have a spot on the postseason roster set in stone, so if May needs even three weeks on the injured list, it\u2019s at least feasible that his Red Sox tenure is effectively over. Certainly, both he and the organization will hope he can get back in minimal time and pitch his way into postseason consideration, but time will tell whether that\u2019s plausible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"5:50pm: Early\u2019s promotion is official. May lands on the 15-day IL, retroactive to September 6, with elbow neuritis.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,91433,91434,14247,6103,591,85,91435,6109],"class_list":{"0":"post-131862","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-brandon-clarke","11":"tag-connelly-early","12":"tag-dustin-may","13":"tag-merrill-kelly","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-vaughn-grissom","17":"tag-zac-gallen"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}