Casas sure looks like a can’t-miss prospect, but he’s not rushing it
BOSTON — It’s been a nine-month global whirlwind for Triston Casas.
The 21-year-old Red Sox prospect reported to spring training in February. His home base shifted from Fort Myers, Fla. (spring training), to Portland (Double A), back to Florida (Olympic qualifiers), back to Portland, to North Carolina (preparation for the Olympics), to Tokyo (Olympics), back to Portland, then to Worcester in September (Triple A).
After the minor-league season, he headed to Scottsdale in October for the Arizona Fall League, which concluded play last Friday.
After 115 games and more than 500 plate appearances, Casas finally made it back home to South Florida last weekend.
Yet as he prepared to head home, he was already looking ahead to kicking off his offseason workout program. His intended date to start readying for 2022?
“The Friday after Thanksgiving,” Casas said recently in Mesa, Ariz. “I chose that because I figured everyone else would start the following Monday.”
Such an approach comes as little surprise to anyone who has crossed paths with the ginormous first baseman. His pursuit of improvement has been tireless since the Red Sox drafted him out of high school in the first round in 2018.
He is fascinated by the art of hitting and anything he can do to gain further mastery over it. Casas views baseball less as a profession than a vocation.
“I think about it all the time,” he said. “When I’m not playing baseball, I’m watching baseball. In the offseasons, when I’m not working out or in between my workouts, I usually come home and I play MLB The Show on my monitor and watch MLB Network on the TV on top of the monitor.
“A lot of people tell me that’s not a good way to go about it because I’ll burn myself out. But I feel like I’ve been feeding the obsession as opposed to burning out. The more that I play, the more I love it.
“Every decision I make is geared toward trying to be the best baseball player that I can be on and off the field, from how much I sleep to what I eat to everything in between. I love the game; it consumes me. It’s a really good obsession to have.”
Steps won’t be skipped
Casas approaches his craft with a burning desire to excel but blends that sentiment with one that seems at odds. He is recognized as one of the top prospects in the game (Baseball America pegged him at No. 15 in mid 2021), and his performance in helping Team USA to a silver medal led to speculation that he could be a late-season callup to Boston, particularly when the Red Sox infield was decimated by COVID-19 in September.
The Sox, however, thought it wasn’t in his interests to skip developmental steps. Casas, who had played just one full minor-league season before 2021, agreed.
“Slowly but surely, I’m getting there, to the point I want to get to, to feel like I’m ready to be a majorleague contributing baseball player,” said Casas. “I personally didn’t feel like I was ready to play at that level. I know one day I will be.
“For as good as a season as I put together, I feel like I really don’t know myself that well to be able to make those adjustments at the big-league level on a consistent basis while also contributing at such a high level for a winning organization.”
Casas embraces the notion that he’s not a finished product even as he has been able to hold his own at every level at which he’s played. He led all Olympians by driving in eight runs, tied for the lead with three homers, then hit .372/.495/.487 in the AFL, leading the prospect showcase league in on-base percentage.
At 6-foot-5 and 250 pounds, Casas is a massive presence in the left-handed batter’s box, making it easy to foresee 30-homer potential. Yet to this point, he has been more focused on developing as an all-around hitter — something that becomes apparent when watching him hit with two strikes.
While Casas sets up early in counts with his front foot at the back of the plate in order to incorporate a stride to generate more power, with two strikes he chokes up on the bat and anchors his front foot at the front of the plate.
With fewer moving parts and a more compact stroke, Casas is able to focus on contact over driving the ball. He embraces shooting a two-strike single through the infield as a winning at-bat.