Triston Casas is trusting his process, but the desired results have yet to arrive.
Boston’s first baseman of the future has underwhelmed this season, the first year of his career he began the campaign as a full-time big leaguer. He’s had his moments, but the conventional metrics aren’t kind to him. He’s hitting .200 with seven homers, eight doubles, a triple, 19 RBIs and 59 walks through 60 games.
Casas does have a decent approach, though. He’ll see pitches and is willing to take walks (he has 35 this season), a skill that has helped him to a decent .368 on-base percentage despite the .200 average. He’s been adamant that he’s confident in his process and that the results will come, but that hasn’t come to pass through two-and-a-half months.
Defense has been less of an issue, but he hasn’t been devoid of flaws at first either. He had multiple miscues in Monday’s loss to the Rockies, which resulted in Justin Turner starting at first over Casas on Tuesday.
Sox manager Alex Cora explained what he’s seen from Casas during his weekly appearance on Gresh & Fauria.
“Offensively, you start looking at his on-base percentage, his chase rate, how hard he’s hitting the ball,” Cora said. “Yeah, everybody gets caught up on batting average and right now it’s .199 or .200, but he’s been getting on base, he’s been hitting the ball hard. If you look at his season, and obviously you can’t turn the clock back, but he’s hit four (homers) to center field.
“One of the things we want him to do – and this is something we had added through his program offensively – is to hit the fastball. Get to it, and he’s doing that. I do believe there's still more to left-center, that's what he did last year. Right now sometimes all of his hard-hit balls are top-spinners to the pull side. He was a guy who was able to stay through the ball and hit the ball in the air to left-center, and he hasn’t done that yet."
Ultimately, the Red Sox don’t have much of a choice but to keep trotting out Casas and letting him figure it out at the big league level. They could have Justin Turner play more at first or call up Bobby Dalbec, but the most prudent move would be to continue to play Casas.
The Red Sox can beat the drum that they want to win this year, and that might be genuine. But at this point, the truth of the matter is this is a team that should be developing its core for the future, and any postseason games that come this year would be gravy.
In that vein, keeping Casas in the majors and trying to get him right there as opposed to Worcester makes sense. For the Red Sox, that will require continued patience through the growing pains. For Casas, it might require a little less rigidity around routines.
“I always said that I respect Triston, his structure, the way he goes about it," Cora said. "Not too many guys that come to the big leagues have conviction about what they need to do. He really believes in his routines, but obviously this is a different game. It’s a little bit faster and you have to make adjustments on the fly, and that’s what we’re doing right now."
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