Players of the Week, April 4-7: Michael Almanzar and Henry Owens

With their outstanding starts to the season, Portland's Michael Almanzar (pictured) and Salem's Henry Owens convincingly earned the first SoxProspects.com Player and Pitcher of the Week honors of 2013, respectively. Each garnered more than half of the votes from the SoxPropects community en route to receiving the awards.

Almanzar, who signed as an international free agent with the Red Sox in 2007, collected four hits, including two home runs, drew one walk and drove in three runs in seven at-bats over the first two games of his Double-A career last week. Last season, the 22-year-old compiled a .300/.353/.458 slash line with 12 home runs and 54 RBI in 124 games in Single-A Salem. He bookended 2012 in the Arizona Fall League, where he hit .185/.272/.235 in 22 games with the Surprise Saguaros and made an appearance in the league's Rising Stars Game.

Owens, who's in his second professional season with the Red Sox, took the mound on April 6 for Salem's second game of the season against the Frederick Keys. The lefty allowed just two hits, struck out four and walked one over five scoreless innings against the Keys, whom the 20-year-old managed to induce seven groundball outs from in his season debut. Owens featured a harder breaking ball in Salem's 3-2 loss than he did last season with Greenville, where he ended with a 4.87 ERA and 130 strikeouts in 23 starts.

Photo Credit: Michael Almanzar by Kelly O'Connor

Kevin Pereira is a Staff Writer at SoxProspects.com. Follow him on Twitter @kevinrpereira

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