Ryan Zeferjahn piling up good outings in Portland; Could we see move up to Worcester soon?
The Portland Seadogs are gaining quite a bit of attention this season due to having the top three prospects in the Red Sox system all playing together there.
Kyle Teel, Marcelo Mayer, and Roman Anthony will garner most of the headlines each and every night Portland is in action. After all, Baseball America ranked Portland as the second most talented team throughout all of minor league baseball, just behind the Norfolk Tide.
While the “Big Three” will always be the main calling cards, has anyone noticed what Ryan Zeferjahn has been up to?
Zeferjahn is a former third round pick in 2019 out of the University of Kansas where he was the top starter for Jayhawks for three seasons before being drafted by the Red Sox. After adding size and velocity in college, the 26-year-old is now listed at 6-5 and 230 pounds. His fastball tops out around 98 or 99 as well in Portland.
The right hander has since switched over to the bullpen and has had more success in relief in the major league level.
“It’s completely different lifestyles.” Zeferjahn said regarding starting and relieving. “As a starter, you throw once a week, and you have five or six days to get your body ready. As a reliever, it’s an everyday thing and you have to be ready to go. In college, I got a little bigger and the reliever standpoint was going to be better for me down the road. I think it was best for me when they told me I would be permanently because I could let the adrenaline go and let it loose for one or two innings. I love the bullpen and being able to let it loose for an inning or two.”
Zeferjahn has appeared in four games so far this season after appearing in 34 last season in Portland all in relief. In four games of action in 2024, the Kansas native has thrown 7.2 innings of near perfect baseball. He has 0 runs and only has walked 1 batter. He has struck out 11 of the 29 batters he has faced and his only allowed 5 hits.
While it’s a very small sample size of only four games, Zeferjahn has shown great promise with limiting the walks that he has had trouble in years past. After having his BB/9 skyrocket to 8.4 last year in Portland, it’s good to see only allowing one walk out of 29 batters faced.
The fastball profiles a future major league role, and his slider shouldn’t be slept on either as it’s graded out as an above average pitch. The real question is when will we see Zeferjahn in Triple-A?
Zeferjahn is Rule 5 Draft eligible at the end of the year and as we saw with Ryan Fernandez, teams will take a chance on a guy with that kind of velocity. It would make a lot of sense to bring him up sooner rather than later and see how he reacts to Triple-A hitting.
With injuries to Chris Murphy, Isaiah Campbell, Bryan Mata, Brandon Walter, and AJ Politi across the major league team and Triple-A, bringing up Zeferjahn to see what he has would be a smart move.
