Triston Casas knows he has a reputation for being a patient hitter. He’s always had a good eye for the strike zone and throughout his professional career has had a knack for laying off close pitches and drawing walks.
Those traits are some of his biggest assets as a player, but sometimes when you’re facing big league pitching, patience only gets you so far.
Mired in a terrible slump through the season’s first month, the Red Sox rookie first baseman has adopted a more aggressive approach in recent days. Rather than try to draw out at bats, he says he’s now looking to do damage earlier if presented the opportunity.
That change in mindset, more than any sort of mechanical adjustment, has helped Casas climb out of his early season funk and fuel his recent turnaround.
“I can’t say I’ve made an adjustment physically or even mentally, I’ve been trying to stay as aggressive as possible when the opportunity is given,” Casas said prior to Tuesday’s game. “A lot of people make a lot about my patience or overaggressiveness, but I’ve kind of thrown all that out the window and kind of just gone up there and said you know what, I’m going to look for a pitch in the heart of the plate, and if it’s right there I’m going to swing.”
While the word “aggressive” often conjures the image of a player hacking away at everything the pitcher throws — think Vlad Guerrero Sr. golfing pitches a foot off the plate into the bleachers — Casas made a point to emphasize that’s not what he means. To him aggressiveness is taking quality swings at pitches in the heart of the zone, no matter when in the at-bat they happen to come.
“I think it’s a good sign when a hitter is taking fringe pitches on the corners, I think that means he’s reading the ball well and he understands that he probably can hit that pitch but not for damage,” Casas said. “There are limited special hitters that can take pitches on the corners of the plate or off the plate and hit them hard, and I don’t consider myself one of those players. I think my swing plays best when I’m under control, balanced and hitting pitches in the middle of the zone.”
The early results have been promising.
When Casas’ slump reached its nadir on May 1, the rookie was batting a season-low .128 with an alarming .281 on-base percentage. Over his last 10 games entering Tuesday he was batting .333 with a much more impressive .417 OBP and a .517 slugging percentage, the sort of numbers the Red Sox hoped Casas could provide all along.
The newfound aggressiveness was also on full display Tuesday night, when Casas pounced on a first-pitch slider down the middle and crushed it 110.7 mph off the bat for a solo home run, his sixth homer of the season.
Red Sox manager Alex Cora said the change has helped Casas swing with more conviction on certain counts, and hitting coach Peter Fatse said he’s done a better job swinging at the right pitches and not getting drawn into more difficult situations.
“There’s a difference between being selectively aggressive and passive,” Fatse said. “For him, he went from being maybe a little bit passive in some areas to more selectively aggressive, and that’s why you’re seeing more early count swings and aggressive swings in hitters counts when he has opportunities to do damage.”
Casas acknowledged that his struggles through the first month weighed on him and playing on such a big stage was initially overwhelming, but he’s made a point to try and slow down the game, trust in his abilities and put himself in the best position to succeed.
As a result, he’s starting to look a lot more like the middle of the order threat the Red Sox always hoped he could become.
After leaving Monday night’s game with what was described as a lat injury, right-hander John Schreiber underwent imaging on Tuesday and was officially diagnosed with a right teres major strain.
The teres major muscle runs from the scapula to the humerus and is more or less located where the back, shoulder and upper arm converge. The Red Sox have not yet provided a timetable for his return, though he’s been placed on the 15-day injured list and will be out a couple weeks at minimum.
Christian Arroyo (hamstring) is making progress but Cora said he won’t travel with the team when they fly to the west coast this weekend. The Red Sox hope to have him play some rehab games next week before rejoining the big league club midway through the west coast swing.
Kiké Hernández (hamstring) was out of the lineup for the third straight game Tuesday, but Cora said he’ll play Wednesday. Kutter Crawford (hamstring) is expected to be activated on Friday barring any setbacks in his rehab outing Tuesday. Yu Chang (broken hamate) is taking ground balls and swinging off a tee.
With Schreiber on the shelf and lefty Brennan Bernardino optioned to Triple-A on Monday night, the Red Sox added two new faces to their bullpen ahead of Tuesday’s game by calling up righty Justin Garza and lefty Ryan Sherriff from Worcester.
Garza, 29, was recently claimed off waivers from the Los Angeles Angels and has appeared in 21 big league games, all with Cleveland in 2021. He has posted a 4.71 ERA over 28.2 innings in his MLB career, and since the start of 2022 he has pitched exclusively at Triple-A. This season he has a 3.95 ERA over 13.2 innings split between Salt Lake and Worcester.
Sherriff, 32, signed with the Red Sox as a minor league free agent this past offseason and was considered a potential contender for the Opening Day bullpen out of camp. The lefty has posted a 3.65 career ERA in four big league seasons between 2017-21 with St. Louis and Tampa Bay, and this season he has a 3.00 ERA in 15 appearances with Worcester.
Given fellow lefty Richard Bleier’s recent struggles against left-handed hitters, Cora said they see Sherriff as an alternative lefty specialist to help navigate tough parts of the lineup in the middle innings.
“He can give us innings but he’s tough against lefties, that sinker-slider combination,” Cora said. “He’s done it before, we’ll see, they’ve got certain pockets we can use him if needed.”