The palpable excitement around the Boston Red Sox coming into the 2025 season seems to already be waning. Losing 11-1 to one of the worst baseball rosters ever assembled professionally on Friday night will do that — as will a middling 7-8 record to being the year. But while there are excuses to be made regarding pitching while awaiting the return of Brayan Bello, Lucas Giolito and Kutter Crawford to the rotation, it's actually been the offense that's been the most disappointing. And Triston Casas has been at the forefront.
Casas, the Red Sox first baseman and clean-up hitter in the lineup, has been off to an awful start. The numbers themselves back that up as he's slashing just .176/.236/.294 to start the season with 16 strikeouts in 55 plate appearances and only four extra-base hits to accompany that. Hitting in the clean-up spot and failing to drive in runs has given Red Sox fans persistent headaches.
Watching Casas struggle, however, has actually made it that much worse. The cerebral slugger looks completely lost and in-between swing thoughts at the plate right now. Whether that's him trying to balance his own approach to get out of a slump with Alex Cora and the Red Sox coaches' advice or just is simply trying to get comfortable after missing much of 2024 with a rib cartilage injury, it's not pretty when he's holding the lumber.
What makes matters worse for Red Sox fans suffering through this slump and the awful effects its having on the Boston offense given how integral he is to their success in the clean-up role is the simple truth that Cora and the Sox don't have a clear fix for the problem.
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Red Sox don't have easy answer to Triston Casas problem
Obviously, the best solution to fixing the issue is for Casas to break out of his slump. When you consider the aforementioned eye test, though, that becomes much harder of a pill to swallow and doesn't seem like it's necessarily close to happening — so much so that it almost appears as if the struggles at the plate are bleeding into his defense, which has gone from average to well below in the past week or so.
We did see Cora sit Casas in one game against the Blue Jays in favor of Romy Gonzalez but that's certainly not a viable solution for anything long term. At best, it's a semi-platoon option to give Casas a break, but Gonzalez's defense is substandard at first base, to put it kindly, and the potential at the plate is overall lesser than with Casas.
First base is also a spot where the Red Sox have little-to-no depth in their farm system. Vaughn Grissom, who initially came to Boston in the Chris Sale trade as a second baseman, has been working at first base in Triple-A Worscester recently, but that seems like a bold move for him to play a still-unfamiliar position in the majors so soon after starting the transition.
Looking even longer term, if the Red Sox had planned to move on from Casas and bring in Vladimir Guerrero Jr., that dream died with the slugger inking a long-term extension with Toronto.
So again, the solution to the Casas problem might be waiting it out. If there's any room for optimism, it's that such a strategy with this exact player has proven fruitful. In his young career, Casas has been a notoriously terrible starter to any given season. In March and April in his career, he's posted just a .671 OPS with a 29.2% strikeout rate. In every other month of the season, though, he has an .864 OPS with the strikeout rate lowering to a more palatable 26.2%.
Perhaps Casas can turn it around and, if there's any consolation, the Red Sox aren't falling far behind while the entirety of the AL East as the division is also mired in mediocrity in mid-April. However, even if he follows the career splits by month he's shown, that won't make the rest of April watching this type of performance any easier to watch for fans. And for a player who's already polarizing among the fan base, it certainly isn't going to win him any more fans.