"The Next?" - Franklin Arias

Next up in our “The Next” segment I am going to go with another prospect whose cards are up a ton this year and that’s Franklin Arias of the Red Sox. Back when I did my Boston buy sheet in February I made Arias a buy when his base autograph was $65. The main reason that I loved him as a buy is because this an extremely hobby friendly fanbase, if not the best then top three for sure. With Roman Anthony having been called up Arias was the only exciting non-debuted hitting prospect in the Boston organization other than Justin Gonzalez who didn’t have a card yet. All it was going to take was another solid season from Arias and there was no doubt in my mind that his base autograph would break $100. What I didn’t expect is that we’d see a massive uptick in his power causing his autographs to more than triple in price to where they now sit at $200+. I have to admit as someone who watched him hit on the back fields this past spring I would not have seen this power surge coming. But this is the Bowman dream. You find a young prospect with every other tool and you just cross your fingers that HR total gets high enough for everybody to take notice. Let’s see if we can’t find any players who could replicate that formula.