WEYMOUTH, Mass. (August 13, 2024) 一 For the first time in the Futures League’s 14-year history, a league alumnus has made his Major League Baseball (MLB) debut for the Boston Red Sox.
Former Nashua Silver Knight and Bryant University catcher/infielder Mickey Gasper earned the call to Boston, drawing a 10th-inning walk in his MLB plate appearance that helped the Red Sox to a walk-off win over the Texas Rangers on Monday night at Fenway Park. He is the 21st all-time Futures League alum to make his MLB debut, and the third this season.
A 28-year-old native of Merrimack, N.H., Gasper was recognized as the 2016 Futures League Most Valuable Player after posting a .421 average that was tops in the league’s single-season history until 2023. The 2022 Futures League Hall of Fame inductee still holds the circuit’s best on-base percentage in a single summer at .532.
Gasper also slugged a league-leading .726 with 31 extra-base hits, including a league record-tying 21 doubles, 42 RBI and 119 total bases during his lone summer with Nashua. He remains the only Silver Knight to ever win a Futures League MVP award.
Gasper joins Worcester Braveheart alum and now-New York Yankees first baseman Ben Rice, formerly of Dartmouth College, as the second former MVP to make his MLB debut this season. Rice was the MVP in 2020, his second Futures League season. Gasper is also the second-ever Futures Leaguer to wear a Red Sox uniform after former Brockton Rox and Sacred Heart University infielder Zack Short played in two games this past May.
Before being recalled, Gasper had been tearing up the Triple-A level with the Worcester Red Sox. He hit .401 with a 1.017 OPS, 12 doubles, eight home runs (including two last week to earn International League Player of the Week honors) and 32 RBI across 40 Triple-A games following his June 4 promotion from the Double-A Portland Sea Dogs to Worcester.
Gasper is the third overall alum and first-ever position player to reach MLB out of Bryant, which becomes the ninth different New England-based college program to provide the Futures League with one of its MLB players. He was a .344 hitter with 119 RBI over 165 career games for the Bulldogs from 2015-18, helping them win the Northeast Conference championship in 2016 and earning Player of the Year honors as a senior in 2018.
Gasper was a 27th-round draft pick of the Yankees in 2018, made his professional debut that summer with Pulaski of the rookie-level Appalachian League, and was named a 2019 South Atlantic League All-Star. However, it was not until the Red Sox selected him in the Rule 5 Draft this past winter 一 and, really, being promoted to Worcester 一 when his season and career took off. Gasper had played in just 22 Triple-A games prior to this season.
The first of three Futures League alums to play in a MLB game this season was former Bristol Blue and Georgia Tech product Justyn-Henry Malloy, who got the call from the Detroit Tigers earlier this month. Malloy played in his first game on June 3 and hit his first home run just two days later.
Rice debuted on June 18 and has gone on to post seven homers and 22 RBI over his first 40 games for the Yankees. The highlight of Rice’s season was a three-homer, seven-RBI game against the Red Sox on July 6 at Yankee Stadium.
Former Martha’s Vineyard Sharks and Wheaton College catcher Nick Raposo was recalled to the St. Louis Cardinals on June 22, but never appeared in a major league game. Raposo has since joined the Toronto Blue Jays organization.
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