Triston Casas may be over

The Boston Red Sox dropped to a record of 0.500 over the weekend, but the unpleasant feeling was masked by a knee injury that lost first baseman Triston Casas. In the first of Friday’s three-game matchup against the twins, Casas suddenly collapsed as he tried to beat pitcher Joe Ryan’s slow roller. Casas had undergone surgery on Sunday after ruptured his left pat tendon. Without Casas, the second-place socks had to reconsider their short-term options at first base, ideally after they were behind in Al East.

Boston can’t find an optimistic reason to actively spin what’s going on. Chief baseball officer Craig Breslow appeared immediately and said the team would not expect Casas to return in 2025. So if you expect the first baseman to catch up with the playoffs, this seems likely to be extremely unlikely.

So what does this mean for Casas? Well, from a baseball perspective – not a recovery perspective, because I'm less qualified to make a medical statement than Dr. Nick Riviera – Zips sees Casas as a solid average first baseman with an expected slash of .246/.350/.350/.462, a 125 WRC+ and 1.6 WAR. The last number is at a low level simply because Zips expects he has only played 108 games, partly because he was lined up in the past, but because of his injury history. I expressed concerns about his preseason profile because he struggled with contact.

Casas started the year very slowly, reaching .182/.277/.303 with a bleak hit rate of 58 WRC+. This is worrying for any player, but it is even more so for a platoon with first basemen without much defensive value. All 27 games he started this season were against the right. April, but the bad start did put some obstacles on his long-term prospects. Start some predictions, zips-o-matic!

Casas has struggled with a significant decline in the next five years of forecasting, although I personally don’t think it’s enough to fundamentally change our view of him. He is still a powerful first baseman and you'd love to have it in your roster, but he's not the main star to build. By the way, the zipper worries are far less than the Red Sox, but rather Casas faces left-handed. He is expected to play against Southpaws' .226/.317/.395 line in 2026. This is not ideal, but it is not an unusually large row, for the left-handed Slugger.

Zips realizes the injury, but mainly in hindsight. This is a time factor that is missed after the fact, because I don't like diagnosing the current location of the injury. But in this case, because we know Casas’ seasonal projection is almost certainly a zero-dish appearance, I don’t mind breaking the rules and tell Zips that 2025 is over, Casas missed over 100 games with a knee injury.

As you can see, the damage at the end of the season worsened his projection slightly. But if there is a silver lining here, it's that Cass's game isn't really based on speed, which means Zips expects a knee injury to have a smaller overall impact on him than on faster runners. By contrast, I made the same predictions for Jarren Duran after I brought a serious knee injury to Jarren Duran – Sorry, Jaren! – His expected war in 2026 dropped from 3.5 to 2.2 war.

Casas should be back in 2026, but the Red Sox must answer the question of what to do at first base in the next five months. Romy Gonzalez has been a platoon partner for Casas this year and took a good hit in his 55-dish appearance on Monday morning at .327/.382/.449. But he may lose about a hundred points from the current .421 Babip, so it is unrealistic for him to continue this way. That said, he has been in close contact this season, with a hard speed of nearly 60%, up from 50% last year, which means his production is not Shilong's fluorine either. Zips predicts Gonzalez will release 107 WRC+ for the rest of the season, which is a reasonable performance for the B-B first baseman, but the Red Sox should be more ambitious than settled in a reasonable way, especially when the players in question are more like alternatives to B-based managers than the real first baseman.

But who should they target? This is a difficult question. Rafael Devers seems to be the possible internal choice, and the team hasn't explicitly ruled out that option, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Red Sox decided not to consider how he responded when he moved him off third base after signing Alex Bregman. In this case, perhaps discretion is the heroic majority. Boston also doesn't seem inclined to temporarily move Roma Anthony to first base.

Outside the organization, picking is currently small, as few teams give up completely this season. Andrew Vaughn is perhaps Available, his peripherals show he's better than the actual numbers during the brutal beginning, but I'm not sure if Boston really wants to do a reclamation project here. The recently relegated Jake Burger will raise the same objection. If the Nathan is interested in trading Nathaniel Lowe, he might be the best option out there and he will not be a free agent until after next season, although that may make it unlikely that they will move him. And winemakers may not have the moment to let Rhys Hoskins go at a cheap price. Anthony Rizzo is still a free agent, and Jon Singleton is now with the Mets, but if that were the two best options, I think the Red Sox will roll with Romy. (I want to see Marcelo Mayer have some time at first, but it's mostly like that, I can make some kind of lame romy and Marcelo's high school party joke.)

Casas's injury hasn't destined to his future prospects too much, and it hasn't ruined Boston's chances this season, but the Red Sox needs to quickly decide what they want to do here. Of course, the impact of any first base move will be limited, but even marginal upgrades may make a difference in the tense Al East game.