In the eighth inning of a tied game Wednesday, Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora lifted Triston Casas from the game for pinch-hitter Romy Gonzalez. Amid an 0-for-2 night with two strikeouts, it was the latest sign of some waning confidence in Casas.
The Red Sox entered the season hoping Casas was poised for a big year after an injury-plagued 2024 season, but so far it’s been anything but. Casas is hitting .181 through 27 games with three home runs, 11 RBIs and a .589 OPS.
There had been some encouraging signs recently – back-to-back games with a home run and three RBIs to open the Seattle series last week, and a two-hit game in Tuesday’s series opener in Toronto. But it still wasn’t enough for Cora to leave Casas in to face lefty Brendon Little, even though Casas has actually been better against lefties than righties this season.
The Red Sox don’t have an obvious replacement as an everyday first baseman, but The Greg Hill Show’s Jermaine Wiggins asked chief baseball officer Craig Breslow on Thursday if it’s time to start thinking about a “Plan B.” Listen to the full interview above.
“So, we want to put the best team on the field that we possibly can, the one that gives us the best chance of winning games,” Breslow said. “I think we've seen some signs from Triston that things could be trending in the right direction over the last week and a half or so. It seems like there have been some in-game performances that have been encouraging, whether it's a couple hits the other night, a couple home runs on the homestand. But more than that, just about being on time and getting his best swing off, not allowing hittable pitches to pass by in the strike zone. We've seen some more of that, and so we're encouraged. But at the same time, our job is to put the best team on the field that we possibly can.”
Wiggy followed up by asking how hard it is to stay patient with a player like Casas who doesn’t have as long of a track record to fall back on as an Alex Bregman or Rafael Devers, and Breslow acknowledged that it’s a challenge.
“So, we try to focus on some of the underlying process and make sure that the work day to day is good and that we're seeing encouraging signs,” Breslow said. “But of course, it's hard to stay patient. It's hard to stay patient for all of us, Triston included, because we tend to want to react to what we saw in last night's game. Just the nature of baseball and the baseball season is such that that's not the best approach here, but that doesn't make it any easier.”