The Red Sox took Oklahoma right-hander Kyson Witherspoon in the first round in 2025, and his pro debut this year hasn’t gone smoothly. I saw him pitch for High-A Greenville in one of Sunday’s doubleheader match-ups against High-A Frederick. Even after allowing one run in 4 1/3 innings in that outing, he has a 6.46 ERA and some mediocre peripherals (a 13.2 percent walk rate, five homers allowed in 30 2/3 innings). Boston has drastically changed his delivery and it’s clearly still a work in progress.Witherspoon had a very short arm action with a slight stabbing motion at glove separation when he was at Oklahoma, but now he has a longer arm swing without that added move, and, for the moment at least, he’s having trouble repeating it. He’s also extremely slow and deliberate on the mound.When I saw him on Sunday, he had one pitch-clock violation and ran the clock as far down as possible on most pitches. His four-seamer was 94-96, effective in or near the zone, and he showed four offspeed pitches, with a cutter, slider, a power curveball at 78-82 and a changeup that he barely used.In college, his slider and cutter blended with each other, but they’re now very distinct pitches. He’s using his curveball, which was his sharpest pitch on Sunday, more often. His changeup is slower and easier to pick up because his arm speed isn’t the same. His arm is a little late every time, which isn’t helping his timing or consistency, and might be why the slider and cutter were just fair, although that last bit is pretty speculative given how well he spun and landed the curveball. He’s still coming from a high three-quarters slot, similar to where he was as an amateur, and he’s finishing early, with most of his misses on his fastball and cutter coming either up or to the glove side.Most of his pitches out of the zone weren’t very close at all, with just one pitch all game in the ‘shadow’ (one ball off the zone in any direction), so he’s not generating chases — he’s either in the zone or nowhere close.Witherspoon struck out six on Sunday, matching his season high, with Frederick hitters really struggling to catch up to the heater — they whiffed on the fastball 10 times in the game, out of 18 total swings. He could probably have more success if he went with 50 percent or more fastballs and maybe pared his total number of pitches, which would give him better stats now while also not helping him develop a better arsenal for the long term.If I had zero history on the guy at all, I’d say he’s a very likely reliever — he doesn’t repeat his delivery, his command is a 45 at best (on the 20-80 scouting scale) and neither the slider nor cutter is an out pitch yet. Given how much the Red Sox have changed him, however, I’m inclined to give him a lot of slack. Changing an arm action like this is a big deal and it might take him most of the year to get comfortable with it.