The Red Sox have numerous problems that have led them to last-place.
One of them is a lack of production at first base.
Heading into Sunday morning's series finale against the White Sox the Red Sox' first base spot had the second-worst production in baseball, sitting with a .135 batting average and .421 OPS.
Bobby Dalbec is hitting .143 with a .451 OPS, while his left-handed complements (Travis Shaw, Franchy Cordero) haven't offered much in the way of solutions, either.
All of it surfaces the conversation regarding top prospect Triston Casas.
The first baseman is hitting .257 with an .844 OPS with Triple-A Worcester, having collected hits in eight of his last nine games.
One of the few negatives when it comes to Casas' production with the WooSox has been an inability to hit left-handed pitching, with the lefty hitter managing just a .154 batting average and .459 OPS vs. southpaws. All five of his homers have also come against righty pitching.
Saturday afternoon, when sitting down with the media in the Red Sox' dugout, Red Sox Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom addressed the idea of promoting Casas.
"It’s obviously something we keep a very close eye on," Bloom said. "We do with everybody there, but certainly him with what he’s capable of, what his ceiling is. I point to a couple of things. One is that he had a really interesting and great developmental last year, but just because of how it was broken up with the Olympics, moving levels, he wasn’t necessarily in one place for long enough to really have the league make a lot of adjustments to him and then for him having to adjust in return.
"And one of the things about the game today, more than at any point maybe ever, certainly longer than I’ve been in it, is when you get to the major leagues, there is already a book on you. We have a lot of information, and you will get attacked the way you should be attacked form pitch one. So going through that period of making those adjustments is really important for really any young hitter. We saw Jarren (Duran) go through it last year and we see around the league some guys take the league by storm and a lot don’t. Our job is to try to position everybody to be where their odds of success are as good as they can be, and to have him be here when they’re ready to be here. That’s certainly something that we think he can get out of this year. Obviously looking at how he does versus lefties, how he does versus big-league stuff is really important. Just knowing how he or any young hitter’s going to get attacked when they get up here."
To listen to the entire Bloom press conference, click here ...