The Boston Red Sox selected one of the most MLB-ready prospects in the 2025 MLB Draft with their first-round pick.
Oklahoma right-hander Kyson Witherspoon, widely considered a top-10 draft prospect, fell into Boston’s lap at No. 15 overall. The 20-year-old was arguably the No. 1 right-handed pitcher in his class.
Witherspoon boasts a fastball that peaks at 99 mph, and his curveball, slider, and cutter each are 60-grade pitches that fooled college hitters last season. He finished the 2025 campaign with a 2.65 ERA, 1.01 WHIP, 124 strikeouts, and just 23 walks over 16 starts (95 innings).
Baseball America listed Witherspoon as one of 12 prospects from this year’s draft who could make their MLB debut in 2026. Oklahoma head baseball coach Skip Johnson agreed with that assessment, citing Witherspoon’s impressive pitch repertoire and work ethic.
“A hundred percent, I think he can do that,” Johnson told NBC Sports Boston. “His fastball command and his secondary command really will help him a lot with that, and there’s no doubt about that. … I think he’s got that mindset of, he’s got so much conviction in what he does and how he goes about his business. He’s really routine-oriented. I mean, he’d get to the field to do his mobility. It was really unique watching him. He would stay in there hours after a start, you know, a Friday night, and get his mobility stuff, get his work done.
“What was really unique, I took a video of him, it was three weeks after our season, we had a recruit in. He came up there, and on a Sunday, it was like 1, 1:30, 2:00 in the afternoon, and (Witherspoon) was working on his mobility, working on doing his workouts and stuff like that, getting him ready to play. I was like, ‘Wow, his mindset is elite.'”
Witherspoon’s stuff speaks for itself, but he’ll have to clean some things up in the minors before the Red Sox feel comfortable putting him on a big-league mound. Johnson identified areas for Witherspoon to work on as he transitions to pro ball.
“I think one thing is holding runners. He’ll get better at that,” Johnson said. “It’s a really simple thing for him. Continue to develop a tunneling system for him that works for him. Anything that could happen into a game. I kind of always looked at it like, Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods back in his heyday, he could get up and down from anywhere. That’s kind of like Kyson. When you get to the big leagues, you gotta be able to learn how to pitch with your C game and get five or six innings. Learn how to pitch with your B game and get six or seven innings. When your A game’s going, it doesn’t matter, you’re gonna throw six, seven, eight, nine already.
“So understanding those things, because that’s gonna happen to you. The crazy thing about baseball, you make a quality pitch and it might hit off the end of the bat and things might happen in the game. Just understanding it’s really just about one pitch and continue that mantra going in, ‘Hey, I’m just trying to win as many pitches as I can as I go through this game and control myself.”
Oklahoma baseball head coach Skip Johnson shares what Red Sox fans should expect from first-round pick Kyson Witherspoon.
Witherspoon started his college career at Northwest Florida State College in 2023. After one season, he transferred to Oklahoma and began working with Johnson on improving his secondary pitches.
“We had a lot of work to do coming in from junior college,” Johnson said. “He had fastball command, that’s one thing that he always had. He had a good arm, he had fastball command. He didn’t really have a breaking ball. He kind of started working on the slider. That got him through the first year, and his growth really kind of started then.”
In his first season with the Sooners, Witherspoon recorded a 3.71 ERA with a 1.36 WHIP, 90 strikeouts, and 40 walks. He took his game to another level in 2025, and his college coach believes he’ll only continue to grow from here.
“We kind of started working on the mental game, understanding how to go pitch to pitch, understanding what releases are when something bad happens to you, to release and get to the next pitch,” Johnson added. “I think that’s what really separated. Learned a cutter, changeup’s still a work in progress. And then, in January, we’re sitting there, and we actually talked about it his freshman year, his slider’s really conducive for him to throw a curveball. In November he played with it, in January we started adding to his bullpens and kind of adding to his game. And at the end of the spring, he used it a lot more.
“So it was kind of one of those deals they couldn’t sit on just one pitch or two pitches. He could go through the lineup and understand, this is what I’m gonna go through, show them right here in the first time through the lineup, second time through the lineup. I think that’s the biggest thing is he grew so much in how he adapted from pitch to pitch and inning to inning, lineup for the first time, the second time. And his will is what’s really incredible, and his poise is what really makes him unique.”
The Red Sox shouldn’t rush Witherspoon to the majors, but all signs point toward him being Boston’s most exciting pitching prospect since Brayan Bello. Johnson also described Witherspoon as a “culture changer,” so it sounds like the young gun is close to MLB-ready both on and off the field.
Witherspoon was the first of 15 pitchers selected by the Red Sox in the 2025 MLB Draft.
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