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.
Tracy said Anthony felt discomfort in the wrist after a couple of checked swings in Boston's Game 1 loss.
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.
"After I came back, the hand was never really fully 100%," Anthony said before Wednesday's game. "For me it was to a point where it was tolerable and I was taking certain swings that were sketchy and I was still able to come back and recover enough to just be in there every single day. But ultimately I just took a few swings here recently where that wasn't the case."
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.
Anthony was driven to Boston after the game to undergo tests Wednesday morning and rejoin the team in New York for Game 2. It has not yet been determined whether Anthony's injury will require surgery.
"I've been experiencing some things with the swings and the check-swings over the past six weeks," he said. "Last night just felt a little bit more intense, a little bit more worse than past swings that have been lingering a little bit longer than the ones I was used to.
"It was just super alarming and it got to a point where it was tough to grip a bat. I knew then and there that this was a little bit more similar to the one earlier in the year. That's why we decided to go get imaging."
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.
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."
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.