The Red Sox made a SNEAKY good Signing... (and no one is talking about it)

While everyone in baseball is getting ready for the World Series, the Red Sox made a move on Thursday that almost no one is going to talk about. And it's a minor league deal. No press conference, no 40-man roster spot, but it's a catcher who's spent all of 2024 in AAA. However, that catcher just hit 16 home runs in 82 games. He swings the bat harder than almost anyone, and he walked into the exact hole Boston created at the trade deadline. And in this video, we're going to tell you exactly why this is a sneaky good signing, and I'll show you why it costs Boston nothing and how it can matter for the 2027 Boston Red Sox. So let's get to the basics. Here's what happened. On Thursday, Ari Alexander of 7 News Boston reported that the Red Sox are sending catcher Riley Adams to an minor league deal. In his words, Adams has 263 games of MLB experience, mostly with the Nationals from 2021 to 2025. Adams is 30 years old. He was taken off the Nationals 40-man roster in July, sent outright to AAA Rochester, and he became a free agent after this regular season. So for the first time since 2021, he didn't play a single game in the big leagues, and the Red Sox looked at that and said, we'll take him. Now, wait, wait, wait, before you click away and it's just a minor league deal, stick with me. Because when you look at who this guy is and what Boston's catching room looks like right now, the move makes a lot more sense than you actually realize. And just quickly, if you want every move that this front office makes this offseason right at your fingertips, subscribe right here to Red Sox Digest. Currently, we're at 7,734 subscribers, and we're trying to reach that 8,000 subscriber mark every single day. We get a new subscriber, we get closer to that mark. So who is Riley Adams? Well, he's a California kid, born in Encinitas, and he played basketball and baseball at Canyon Crest Academy in San Diego, and he's a big man. Baseball reference lists him at 6'4", 263 pounds. Now, the Cubs were the team that actually drafted him out of high school back in 2014 in the 37th round. He actually didn't sign them. He went to the University of San Diego instead, and in 2017, he was the West Coast Conference Player of the Year. That same summer, the Toronto Blue Jays took him in the third round, 99th overall, and gave him $542,000 in a signing bonus. Then just a couple years later, he made his big league debut for Toronto in June of 2021, and his first big league hit was a double off Carlos Rodon. But Toronto had Alejandro Kirk and Danny Jansen, so ultimately he was blocked at the catching position. On July 29th, 2021, Toronto traded him to Washington for reliever Brad Hand. The Jays were chasing a playoff spot, and then they needed bullpen help, and Washington was selling, and they wanted a young catcher. When talking about Riley Adams, there's a part that people forget. When he got to Washington in 2021, he was really, really good. 35 games, a .268 average, a .422 on-base percentage, and an OPS of 887. And a week after the trade, he hit his first big league home run, ninth inning in Atlanta off Will Smith, and put Washington ahead in that game that they won 3-2. However, he just never really stuck at the major league level. In 2022, he hit just .176 in 48 games. In 2023, he finally broke out, and we'll get to that. But then June of 2024, Washington sent him back down to Rochester. So as you can see, the talent has always been there. The problem was everything after that. And that's where this gets interesting, because the version of Riley Adams that Boston just signed is not the version that you saw in Washington. Now let's talk about all the reasons that this is a sneaky good signing. The first one, the bat. Let's be honest about the big league numbers first. Over five seasons and 263 games, Adams is a .211 hitter with a .287 on-base percentage and a .354 slugging percentage with just 21 home runs. In 2025, it was rough. 83 games, a 186 average, and a 560 OPS. And to be fair, 2025 was also the most he's ever played, 286 plate appearances, and he still hit a career-high 8 home runs. But let's go back a couple years to 2023. 44 games, he hit .273 with an OPS of .807, and his OPS plus was 121, which means he was 21% better than a league average hitter. Then in September, he broke the hamate bone in his hand, needed surgery, and his season was over then. Now let's go to 2026. He was back in AAA with Rochester was something to prove. Adams ended up hitting .273 with a .389 on-base percentage and a .506 slugging percentage. 15 doubles, 16 homers, 50 RBIs, 82 games. You kind of get the sense. Now that's an .895 OPS, and the number I love is the walks. 41 walks against 80 strikeouts. And while that might not seem like a great comparison, in 2025 it was terrible. 18 walks to 110 strikeouts. Now I know what you're going to say, is it AAA? Yes. But pitching isn't always the same, and a guy who is chasing everything from taking his walks is a guy who had something changed, and it comes with real power behind it. In 2025, Bo Sox Injection points out that Adams had elite bat speed, 78.3 miles per hour, and a hard hit rate of 52.3%. When the guy makes contact, the ball is going to be hit hard. The question was always how often he makes contact, and if the walks are real, he's a backup catcher who can hit one out of Fenway on any pitch, and that's kind of rare. Now, the second reason is Boston's catching room is thinner than it actually looks. Let's go back to deadline day. August 3rd, Boston traded for three-time all-star Adley Rutschman. Great! But to get him, they sent Carlos Novas to Baltimore, along with Anthony Ionson, Kyson Winterspoon, and Andy Azokar. So the catcher who started on opening day is gone, and the Rutschman, who's the guy who replaced him, is only under team control for just one more season. And Bo Sox injection put it plainly. Adams adds to Boston's deep pool of emergency options if something were to happen to Rutschman, who has been injury-prone over the last few years. He even spent time on the injured list this past August. Then there's the backup job. Connor Wong caught most of the backup innings in 2026, and he hit .233 with a .655 OPS in 77 games. Sports Illustrated even reported they were rumors at the deadline that Boston was going to shop him. And Mickey Gasper, who can catch, is recovering from bicep surgery and getting hurt in Boston's short playoff run. So Sports Illustrated said it best. The move is interesting because Adam presents more competition in the backup job. Bo Sox and Jackson list Jason DeLay, Thomas Nido, and Nate Baez as Boston AAA catchers. Adam joins the group as one coming off a 16 home run season with 263 big league games on his resume. And it brings something else to the competition, an arm. In 2025, Adams threw out 19 base stealers, a caught stealing rate of 28.8%, which the league averaged 23.2%. Now, to be fair here, his framing graded out in the fifth percentile in 2025, and he struck out 38.5% of the time. Those are the reasons he was on the market, but a backup catcher who can control running game and hit for power, and for a team that need one, that's a pretty good fit. And of course, it's why 2027 matters. If Rutschman gets hurt and who's been injury-prone, or Boston decides to move Wong this winter, Adams is the guy in Worcester who's already ready to go. And reason number three, and this is the big one, there's literally no risk in signing him. It's a minor league contract. He's not on the 40-man roster, so Boston doesn't have to drop anyone to make room for him. If he doesn't hit spring training, he'll go to Worcester and he'll be a depth piece. If he does hit, though, Roto-Wire says, quote, he'll likely get an opportunity to compete for a roster spot during spring training. And here's the cool thing about all this. TalkSox points out that, quote, players on minor league contracts and not on the 40-man roster are not affected by the lockout. Adam's going to fit that category perfectly. So let's say the winter gets messy. Boston already has a catcher signed who isn't caught up in it, and that's smart roster building. Think of it like this. You're going to go out and grab a free lottery ticket. Most of the time, yeah, it's nothing. But every so often, you're going to find something on a minor league deal who ends up playing on a real roll. And guess what? You're never going to find that guy if you don't go out and just buy that ticket. So the question you're asking, you know, is this actually a sneaky good signing? Well, it's not a blockbuster, but Sports Illustrated said it plainly. He had been a career backup. And the biggest thing to me, he's literally no risk to sign. Your catching depth is in a nice spot now, where you have a guy who has 263 big league games who can throw out batters. Ultimately, Rutschman has been injury prone, and so if this happens to be a season where he gets injured again because it's happened the past couple years, you're not left out to dry when that happens, and you've got somebody who has major league experience. Of course, we have to watch whenever spring training does happen what it looks like. We're not going to watch the batting average, the walks, and the strikeouts. If the AAA version of Riley Adams shows up in Fort Myers, taking pitches and punishing mistakes, Boston might have found its backup catcher for literally nothing. But I do want to hear from you. Does Riley Adams make the opening roster as the backup catcher, or does he start this year in Worcester? Tell me that in the comments section. For now, guys, we'll see you in the next video, and peace out.