The Red Sox reached into the high school ranks for a sweet-swinging first baseman in the first round of Monday's baseball draft.
With their first pick, 26th overall, the Red Sox selected Triston Casas, a 6-foot-4, 245-pounder from American Heritage School in Plantation, Fla., the same school that produced Padres Gold Glove first baseman Eric Hosmer.
Casas hits left-handed and has already committed to the University of Miami, the alma mater of Red Sox manager Alex Cora. Ranked 20th in this year's draft class by MLBPipeline and 34th by ESPN's Keith Law, Casas hit .387 with seven homers and 34 RBIs while posting a 1.431 OPS this year.
While Law terms Casas's power potential "an open question," his swing and selectivity make him a strong candidate to hit for average.
Speaking on a conference call on Tuesday night, Casas made it clear he wants to get his pro career started.
"It was kind of evident that I wanted to get drafted and playing baseball is something I want to do for a living and the quicker I can get it started, the better," Casas said. "I didn't really tell scouts or anybody that I was leaning one way. They just kind of assumed for themselves what I wanted. I'm not going to lie. I love the city of Boston and this fit, so it's going to be hard for me to turn this down."
Sharing a high school with Hosmer has enabled him to forge a connection with the former World Series champ.
"Thankfully he went to my high school and he heard I was pretty good and in the area, so he's invited me to his house a couple of times to hit and talk about baseball and just life in general," Casas said. "I'm really appreciative of the way he's taken me under his wing, and basically given me advice all the way through my career for the past three of or four years. He was in my shows before, and I feel like he's just trying to pass it down. I've never really had any much more contact with any big leaguer, besides him, but I don't feel like I'm getting shortchanged."