Casali a willing recruiter for Giants

When Giants outfielder Mike Yastrzemski was determining where he would play college baseball, the Massachusetts native made an official visit to Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

It doesn’t take much to convince a teenager to play at one of the most prestigious programs in the country, but Commodores standout Curt Casali ditched his catcher’s mask for his sales cap and went to work anyway.

“We did all the things on an official visit I can’t say on camera,” Casali, a New Canaan native, joked.

Shortly thereafter, the duo became teammates under head coach Tim Corbin. And 10 years after Casali last suited up at Vanderbilt, he’s reuniting with Yastrzemski after signing a one-year, $1.5 million deal to join the San Francisco Giants.

“I could sit here for an hour and talk for an hour about all of the reasons I wanted to be a Giant,” Casali told reporters on a videoconference on Tuesday

With an opportunity to open the 2021 season as the primary backup to Buster Posey, Casali jumped at the chance to sign with the Giants. The move to San Francisco will reunite him with old teammates such as Evan Longoria (Rays) and Kevin Gausman (Reds), give him a chance to continue catching recent free- agent signee Anthony DeSclafani and reunite with a hitting coach in Donnie Ecker who Casali worked with in Cincinnati and made a “huge” impact in his desire to join the Giants.

The eight-year majorleague veteran said he first met manager Gabe Kapler in the Rays organization, regularly plays Call of Duty with outfielder Steven Duggar and has connected with Posey, but when making a decision on his future, Casali said he didn’t need to consult many members of the organization.

More than a decade after pitching Yastrzemski on Vanderbilt, the outfielder helped convince him San Francisco was an ideal destination.

“I talked to Yaz quite a bit,” Casali said. “I wasn’t trying to get too many people involved just in case it didn’t work out. Mike was hugely important in basically laying the land out for what I’d be walking into, who I’d be around and it’s nice to have a person to act as a liaison coming into a new organization.”

A friendship that started in Nashville has continued through the years as the new Giants teammates were groomsmen in each other’s weddings and roommates in Scottsdale last spring.

“I had a 45-minute commute to Goodyear (with the Reds) and he had, like, a three-minute scooter ride to Old Town,” Casali said.

After MLB paused operations during the coronavirus pandemic, Yastrzemski and Casali retreated back to Nashville where they played pickup games on a local high school field with fellow big-leaguers and former Commodores such as Tony Kemp and Sony Gray.

“He was taking Sonny Gray deep routinely,” Casali said of Yastrzemski.

That probably doesn’t surprise many Giants fans.

The expectations for

Yastrzemski, the 2020 Willie Mac Award winner and eighth-place finisher in National League MVP voting, will be quite different than those for Casali, who will enter spring training as the front-runner to play behind Posey. The powerhitting outfielder will be counted on to lead a Giants lineup that became a surprising force last season while Casali has incentives in his contract that reward him simply for hanging on to a roster spot for more than 30 days.

With the expectation that top catching prospect Joey Bart will likely start the year in the minors but finish it in the majors, it’s far too soon to know how much the Giants will rely on Casali. The team’s newest addition believes Posey — who is another year removed from a 2018 hip surgery similar to two operations Casali has had during his career — will benefit from having a full offseason to prepare for the rigors of the major-league schedule, so playing time could be difficult to come by.

It’s also possible Casali could have a significant impact on the Giants’ future before he ever dons a uniform. With former Reds teammate Trevor Bauer a sought-after commodity in free agency, the veteran catcher said, “If I’m ever instructed to woo him, I will.”

“He’s always ahead of the curve,” Casali said of Bauer. “He’s the most analytical pitcher I’ve ever caught. He understands exactly how his body works. He’s extremely smart. Extremely well-prepared when he gets on the mound. He’s the one leading the pregame meetings every time.”