The Red Sox have selected 20-year-old righty Kyson Witherspoon out of Oklahoma with the 15th overall pick in the 2025 MLB Draft.
Witherspoon posted a 10-4 record with a 2.65 ERA, 1.01 WHIP, 124 strikeouts and 23 walks in 16 starts (95 innings) this college season.
He’s the first pitcher Boston has selected in the first round since drafting Tanner Houck 24th overall in 2017 out of Mizzou.
He’s listed at 6-foot-2, 207 pounds on Oklahoma’s website.
“Kyson is a guy we valued highly entering the draft, and we believe he is one of the top college arms in the class,” Red Sox director of amateur scouting Devin Pearson said in a statement from the team. “We think he fits in nicely with our development strengths and has the right makeup to pitch at Fenway park. We couldn’t be more excited to welcome him to Red Sox Nation.”
His twin brother Malachi Witherspoon, also a right-handed pitcher at Oklahoma, is expected to get drafted as well.
MLB Pipeline ranked him the No. 10 overall draft prospect. Their scouting report notes, “Witherspoon has swing-and-miss stuff, starting with a mid-90s fastball that peaks at 99 mph and stands out more for its power than its modest life. His mid-80s slider can touch 91 mph while featuring both horizontal action and depth, and he’ll turn it into an upper-80s cutter that he uses just as often. He’s showing more consistency with his low-80s downer curveball, giving him another plus offering, while his upper-80s changeup is a work in progress that gets too firm but will show interesting fade at times.”
MLB Pipeline also noted he “uses a compact arm action to generate quality stuff with little effort.”
“I think just the arm path thing, it was never something I really intentionally tried to do,” Witherspoon said via a Zoom call Sunday night. “Coming from a shortstop background throughout high school, I think just the shorter arm path was pretty comfortable for me already.
He said he also began doing a set plyo ball routine entering this past year at Oklahoma.
“I think just doing that routine over and over kind of made it what it is today,” he added. “It wasn’t something I really thought of. … It was just something that I got comfortable with and I started going from there. My delivery got a lot more repeatable. And then got five pitches now which is pretty cool. Hopefully I can keep adding some or just make what I have better.”
The Missouri native graduated from Duncan U. Fletcher High in Neptune Beach, Fla. He initially pitched at Northwest Florida State College in Niceville, Fla., a junior college.
He made two starts for Chatham of the Cape Cod League last summer.
The Red Sox traded their last two top picks (2024 first rounder Braden Montgomery and 2023 first round pick Kyle Teel) to the White Sox for ace Garrett Crochet.
Three of Boston’s first round picks over the past 10 years (Marcelo Mayer, Triston Casas and Tanner Houck) are on the 40-man roster or 60-day IL.
Recent Red Sox first round picks:
- 2025: Kyson Witherspoon, Oklahoma
- 2024: Braden Montgomery, Texas A&M
- 2023: Kyle Teel, Virginia
- 2022: Mikey Romero, Orange Lutheran High (Orange, Calif.)
- 2021: Marcelo Mayer, Eastlake High (Chula Vista, Calif.)
- 2020: Nick Yorke, Archbishop Mitty High (San Jose, Calif.)
- 2019: no first round pick
- 2018: Triston Casas, American Heritage High, (Plantation, Fla.)
- 2017: Tanner Houck, Mizzou
- 2016: Jay Groome, Barnegat High (Barnegat, N.J.)
- 2015: Andrew Benintendi, Arkansas
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