Meet The New Guy: Jake Bennett

Who is he and where did he come from?

He’s Jake Bennett, the former Oklahoma Sooner and 2022 second-round draft pick who the Red Sox acquired for Luis Perales this past offseason. This was curious because Perales had just returned from a 2024 UCL tear and still is just 22 years old, but the 25 year-old Bennett had a pretty fantastic 2025 season, albeit capping out at double-A. He even ended his campaign after fall ball as the organization’s number 10 prospect. The Red Sox are expected to promote him today to start against the Astros.

Is he any good?

Too early to really tell, but he could be. If nothing else, Bennett’s archetype is definitely a favorite of Craig Breslow’s since his appointment as Chief Baseball Officer. He’s a towering lefty, sizing up at 6’6”, 234 pounds. In the 2025 MLB draft, the Red Sox used six of their first eight picks on SEC pitchers who are at least 6’2”. It helps that Bennett, who missed all of 2024 recovering from Tommy John surgery (another possible favorite trait of this front office…) is a lefty. Between Payton Tolle, , , and an emerging Brandon Clarke, Bennett joins a room full of giants. And I don’t mean the ones in ! To get more into Bennett’s skillset, though, he certainly has some velocity across all five of his pitches (he goes to three more often, though). His fastball is creeping back up towards he 97 mile per hour peak it reached before his elbow injury. His cleanest pitch, a mid-80’s changeup with 7.1 feet of extension (which, had he pitched in the Majors, would have placed him in the top 10 percentile) . His cutter is quite a bit shorter, but tops out at 88. As a whole, though Bennett struggles with control, he gets a 47.3% groundball percentage, which is definitely a positive sign in a guy with his velocity. Too long didn’t read: big guy throws hard. And throwing hard certainly comes with advantages, as he worked his way up the Nationals’ system after returning from a year’s absence, proving himself to be up to the challenge at each level. He finished 2025 with a cumulative 2.27 ERA and 1.08 WHIP and allowed just three home runs in 75 innings.