The Boston Red Sox call it the “Highway to Fenway.”
The road is paved with a tried and true formula the Major League franchise has adopted as the best way to develop talented prospects with the ultimate goal of one day putting them in a Bosox uniform in Fenway Park.
Boston’s Class Low-A franchise just a quick hop off Interstate 81 in Salem, where manager Liam Carroll has again taken the off-ramp.
Carroll made headlines and history in 2023 when the Red Sox hired the 41-year-old London native to manage their Salem affiliate, making him the first British citizen to manage a minor league baseball team in the United States. (See last year’s story on Carroll.)
When the Red Sox take the field Friday night at Salem Memorial Ballpark for their 2024 season opener against the Carolina Mudcats, Carroll will be back in the dugout for his second year in Southwest Virginia.
What did he learn in Year 1?
“I don’t think we have enough time for all of the things,” he said.
You get the idea Carroll isn’t kidding.
The Red Sox hired him on Dec. 27, 2022. He moved to the U.S. from England on Feb. 18, 2023. Before he could work with last year’s team at its Florida training camp, he served in an off-the-field capacity for Great Britain’s club in the World Baseball Classic last March.
If he hit the ground running in 2023, it sometimes was like a hamster on a spinning wheel.
Salem finished 55-72 and never made a run at a Carolina League playoff berth.
“Just being more efficient,” Carroll said of his 2024 personal improvement plan. “Having gone through the year, just seeing how the schedule works, seeing how the schedule goes out of the window when it rains, the limitations we have on the road when we don’t have the comforts of home.”
Carroll spent most of the offseason in England. His wife was able to make the trip across the Atlantic to Virginia last summer. Plans include a longer stay in 2024.
“We’re still waiting for my wife to get her visa to move here, to maximize her time here, and to see the dogs.”
Part of Carroll’s job as Salem manager is seeing that some of the team’s players don’t stay long in town.
Promoting players to the next rung up the franchise’s ladder to High-A Greenville (S.C.) and eventually to Boston is the ultimate goal. Last year, power-hitting outfielder Roman Anthony, a 19-year-old high school product from Florida, was moved up at midseason to Greenville and is on track to reach the majors as early as 2025.
Want to see the next Salem star?
Better brave the early-season cold weather because Miguel Bleis might not be around long.
The Dominican Republic native played 31 games in Salem in 2023 before a shoulder injury ended his season. Considered the No. 5 prospect in the Red Sox’ entire organization and once rated the No. 72 minor-league talent by Baseball America, the 20-year-old outfielder is considered a “five-tool” player.
In 40 games in the 2022 Florida Complex League, Bleis hit .301 with five home runs, 27 RBIs, 18 stolen bases and a .896 on base/slugging percentage.
“He’s such an exciting player,” Carroll said. “I wish we had more games so I could watch him play eight days a week. We saw some fast movers last year. We saw Roman Anthony move up and then destroy Greenville pretty quickly.
“I think Bleis has the talent, the aptitude, the smarts and the work ethic to maybe move as fast as Roman did last year.”
A manager hoping his players succeed so they no longer play for him might seem counter-intuitive, but that’s minor-league baseball.
Salem has won five Carolina League championships: 1972-74 with the Pirates, 2011 as a Rockies affiliate and 2013 with the Red Sox when Mookie Betts burst onto the scene as a potential superstar.
Carroll would love to win a Carolina League title, but …
… “Our scoreboard is a little bit different,” he said. “The scoreboard out there above the outfield fence matters OK, and we want to win games. We want people to come out and see a winning ballclub. That’s especially important for us here with the Boston Red Sox.
“But our [internal] scoreboard here is a little bit different. We help them learn the process, learn what creates a win. We’re going to enjoy kind of molding their understanding what it takes to win on a daily basis.”
Learning takes place on and off the field. Salem’s roster includes eight players from the Dominican Republic, seven from Venezuela and two from Puerto Rico, along with nine pitchers from the college baseball ranks.
Boston has sent only two players from the high school ranks to Salem. Both are shortstops: 2023 second-round draft pick Nazzan Zanetello of Christian Brothers H.S. in Missouri and third-round pick Antonio Anderson of North Atlanta H.S. in Georgia.
Zanetello signed for $1.698 million with a $3 million bonus, while Anderson signed for $846,800 with a $1.5 million add-on.
Both players are still 18 years old with the blissful optimism of youth.
California high schooler Chase Coffey came to Salem last spring as a second-round pick in 2022 and batted .226 with a .689 OPs in 81 games before earning a promotion to Greenville.
“You don’t know what you don’t know,” Carroll explained. “The more we can teach ‘process’ they’ll be just fine. We preach ‘finishing.’ It’s the start of the year. Everyone’s excited, and it can be easy to lose sight of the bigger picture.
“They’re incredible young men, so there have been people who have had a tremendous impact on them, but to be involved with them so early in their career is really, really good.”
While Carroll is the No. 1 man in Salem’s dugout, many of the decisions about how and how much to use his personnel are dictated from Boston. The Red Sox hired Craig Breslow as their new director of baseball operations, and much of his responsibility is revamping a slumping minor-league system.
Carroll said he expects to maintain a modicum of autonomy.
“It’s not everything that’s dictated,” he said. “We get very clear instructions where guys will be on the field, where guys will be in the lineup. Then it’s the job of the manager at every affiliate to make that work.
“If you take the manager out of the equation, it’s not going to work. We do have a job to manage those things. Especially as guys get beat up throughout the season, you have to make modifications.”
Carroll’s father was born in Chicago and grew up in New York before moving to London, where he married a British schoolteacher.
Growing up in a country where soccer and cricket are the dominant sport and baseball is often referred to as “rounders,” Carroll has managed to craft out a career on the diamond.
From 1998-2023 he played for, coached or managed British Junior National and British Senior National baseball teams in more than a dozen countries from Austria to Cuba.
He played baseball at Porterville Junior College in California for two years before becoming an assistant coach at Nevada-Las Vegas in 2005 and returning in 2008 for a two-year stint as UNLV’s director of baseball operations.
In 2016, Carroll managed Great Britain’s team in the WBC Qualifying Tournament as the squad finished one victory from making the World Championship.
The next WBC tournament is in 2026 and by virtue of a victory over Colombia in last year’s event, the British squad has an automatic berth.
“I would certainly love to be involved, but we’ll see how the chips fall,” he said.
Carolina League teams usually play six games per week, often with Monday as a travel day or rest day.
On game days in Salem, the players report to the stadium at 11:45 a.m. for a 7:05 p.m. game. They check in with a trainer, lift weights, do individualized drills in the field, take swings in the batting cage and go over a scouting report of the night’s opponent.
Then it’s game time.
“It’s an incredible job, but it is a job,” Carroll said in 2023. “It’s not just the two or three hours that’s the fun part. You have to be there all day.”
Carroll is assisted by a strength and conditioning coach, an assistant strength and conditioning coach, an athletic trainer, an assistant athletic trainer, two video interns and a nutritionist.
He coaches the coaches, and those duties consume a chunk of time.
“Hopefully I can be more efficient with scheduling and spend more of that time with our players, especially on the defensive side,” he said.
Long hours. Long bus rides. Long talks with struggling players. Long separations from family. A long, long way from home.
How long is the Highway to Fenway?
Carroll aims to find out for one reason:
“Professional baseball is a ton of fun.”
