TODAY: Casas’ promotion was officially announced, with the Red Sox also calling up Josh Winckowski from Triple-A. Houck was indeed moved to the 60-day IL, Dalbec was optioned to Triple-A, and right-hander Kutter Crawford was placed on the 15-day injured list with a right shoulder impingement. Crawford was supposed to start today’s game against the Rangers but Sox manager Alex Cora said yesterday that the righty would be scratched. Winckowski will instead make today’s start.
SEPTEMBER 3: The Red Sox are going to add first base prospect Triston Casas to the team tomorrow, according to Chris Cotillo of MassLive. That report has been confirmed by Julian McWilliams of the Boston Globe, who adds that Bobby Dalbec will be optioned to Triple-A Worcester. Casas is not currently on the club’s 40-man roster, meaning they will have to open a spot for him. However, it would likely come down to transferring someone to the 60-day IL, such as Tanner Houck, who was previously reported to be done for the season.
Casas, 22, was selected by Boston in the first round of the 208 draft, 26th overall. He got a brief showing in rookie ball that year and jumped to A-ball to start 2019. He hit 19 home runs for the Greenville Drive while slashing .254/.349/.472, producing a wRC+ of 136 and earning a brief promotion to High-A to finish the year.
After that strong showing in his first full season as a professional, he was ranked the #70 prospect in the sport by Baseball America. Of course, the minor league seasons were canceled that year by the pandemic, preventing Casas from playing organized ball that season. In 2021, he split his time between Double-A and Triple-A, hitting 14 homers and slashing .279/.394/.484. He walked in 15.4% of his plate appearances while striking out in just 19.1% of them, producing a wRC+ of 141.
After that excellent season, he jumped up to #19 on BA’s 2022 top prospects list and seemed a candidate to make his major league debut this season. The Red Sox stuck with Dalbec as their first baseman to start the year and Casas was taken off the table when he suffered an ankle injury in May, returning to Worcester at the end of July. In Triple-A this year, he’s hit .273/.382/.481 for a wRC+ of 127, walking in 14.5% of his trips to the plate while going down on strikes just 21.5% of the time. He’s currently ranked as the #28 prospect in the league by Baseball America, #14 by FanGraphs and #31 by Keith Law of The Athletic.
Fans of the Red Sox have been calling for this move for some time, not just because of the strong showing of Casas, but also the struggles of Dalbec. After hitting 25 home runs last year and slashing .240/.298/.494 for a wRC+ of 107, he’s slumped this year to a showing of .211/.282/.363. That production is 22% below league average, as evidenced by his 78 wRC+. Based on those disappointing results, he and Casas will switch places, with Dalbec going down to the minors to try to get back on track.
The Red Sox are seven games behind the Blue Jays for the final Wild Card spot in the American League with three teams in between, making it very difficult for them to make a serious playoff run over the final month of the season. Regardless, they will give Casas a look over the remainder of the campaign to see how he fares against big league pitching in the next few weeks and hopefully go into the winter with some momentum towards next season. Eric Hosmer was acquired from the Padres at the trade deadline but is currently on the IL. Assuming Casas shows well enough to earn himself regular playing time, the club will have to figure out how to balance having both on the team.
With only a few weeks to go until the offseason, it’s unlikely that Casas will reach 130 at-bats here in 2022, meaning he will hang onto his rookie/prospect status through the winter. That’s a potentially important note under the new collective bargaining agreement. Players with less than 60 days of service who appear among two preseason Top 100 lists at Baseball America, ESPN or MLB Pipeline can net their team a bonus amateur draft choice based on their early-career finishes in awards voting, so long as their club carries them on the MLB roster for a full service year. If Casas cracks next year’s Opening Day roster and sticks around all season, and he wins a Rookie of the Year or places highly in MVP balloting during his first couple seasons, the club could pick up an extra draft choice down the line.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.
LETS GO!
Houck, Duran, Bello, and now Casas?
That’s a lot of Dombrowski top prospects for a farm system that was supposedly barren when Bloom took over.
chowderandchampions.com/2022/01/12/boston-red-sox-…
They would’ve been gone by now too if he was still GM.
Chris – Did Dombrowski trade young talent like Betts, Devers, Xander, Barnes, Benintendi, Vazquez, ERod?
If anything he held onto prospects too long, like Swihart.
And I don’t recall anyone complaining about the prospects he traded for Sale, Kimbrel and Pearce.
Wasn’t Swihart from the Cherington days?
It really is two schools of thoughts. I like Dombrowski but it was clear that mentality wasn’t going to last.
pwndroia – Yes but I was addressing the false notion that Dombrowski trades all highly regarded prospects, regardless of who drafted/signed said prospects.
Sure Dave made some poor decisions, the Sale extension being his worst, but he did have a good feel for which prospects to keep and which ones to cut loose. With the Sale trade, the ChiSox wanted Devers or Benintendi instead of Moncada. He obviously made the right decision to insist on keeping both Devers and Benintendi. It’s too bad Bloom flipped Benni for what has so far been a poor return.
pwndroia – It’s been well documented Henry and Dombrowski parted ways because Henry was furious about the amount of money that was spent to sign players after the 2018 WS and it didn’t even get them a playoff spot in 2019. The contracts given to Pearce, Sale and Eovaldi were all looking bad by the summer of 2019.
When Henry told Dombrowski there would essentially be a freeze on spending for the next couple years, and how he wanted to start operating like Tampa had been, Dombrowski said I’m outta here.
It was his habit IMO of paying too much in the way of secondary prospects, along with the supposed blue chipper which earned the ire of hard core Sox fans, tho agree most never had great MLB careers and that Kimbrell deal u mention Fever was a prime example. Every kid given up was a really decent prospect at the time within the system. Margot being the blue chipper and Logan Allen, Carlos Asuaje and javy guerra as secondary kids. I remember Guerra hitting bombs once when seeing him once for Ft Myers and he had a slick glove to boot, he had some helium when the deal was made and then there was the Drew Pomeranz swap, for the best pitching prospect Boston had had since Lester (at the time) in Anderson Espinoza.. He got hurt right after the deal, but that guy was simply amazing when i saw him.. Upper 90’s, slider fell off the table, but as I posted on soxprospects at the time.. He had this habit between innings of walking the dugout and shaking his pitching arm back then.. Was he already hurting? He was gone several months later.
Fever Pitch Guy;
An old saying:
“Children see things in black and white.
Adults see things in shades of grey.
Successful adults are able to interpret the shades of grey and make decisions on what they view”.
Mostly there are kids on here sprouting a narrative: Dombrowski destroyed the Sox farm system; everything Bloom does is awful. Black and white. (Lots of that going on in America as we now have an abundance of 40 and 50 year-old kids.)
Branch Rickey is my baseball guru. He changed the sport and his methodologies are still used today. But he made many bad decisions. What counts are the good ones.
FO’s can bring in players, coaches, scouts, analytics, trainers, sports psychiatrists, etc. But ultimately the players do what they do on the field. It’s not an exact science. One person is not solely responsible for what a team does. Only 2 out of 30 teams go to the WS each year.
Indeed…Only 2 teams in the WS…and 1 man cannot take them all the way.
Sam – I completely agree, all too often people see things as black or white, they see each manager and PBO as either making all the right decisions or making all the wrong decisions. Me, I’m one of the few who actually gives both praise and criticism because nobody is perfect. Nobody is always right or always wrong.
And yes, players are mostly responsible for game results. But if you’re as old as I am, you’d probably agree that managers get themselves a lot more involved in games these days.
In the past, managers didn’t make nearly as many decisions. They used set lineups throughout most of the season, based on common sense. They made maybe one or two pitching changes in the course of each game, not 4 or 5. The game has changed as management tries to take a bigger role in individual game outcomes, and that saddens me. Not long ago I even quoted Theo here about his desire to get back to letting players dictate the course of games, not algorithms and strategy decided before the game even begins.
I tell my step-dad all the time that many teams/players can literally “manage themselves” and that player-managers are not a farfetched concept to reconsider bringing back.
Trumbo – Very true, but one man can make the difference between early elimination and a World Championship. Often one play changes everything in a team’s game, season, and legacy.
Agreed. I feel like I see it more with pitchers though than position players. I remember Johnson and Schilling mowing through the playoffs….Strasburg and Max…Verlander and Cole… Having your players all healthy come playoff time is a profound luxury. As a Halo fan I know anything is possible though. In 2002 it was nothing but pure hard nosed play and everyone working as a well oiled machine…With a lot of luck too…Wild card spot, took out Yanks in ALDS, Kennedy hits 3 bombs to take down Twins in game 7 of ALCS…A few guys, even one or 2 can have a monumental impact on so much of course, but to win it ALL you gotta be firing on all cylinders and have some luck on your side. How close was TB to being WS champs after all?
I catch your point though regarding early exit vs going deeper in the playoffs. Makes sense. My feeling is that you gotta be smokin through all the way almost. Sometimes it’s the guys you DON’T expect to be the rockstars that make a huge difference. Howie Kendrick for instance..
@Fever Pitch at least Dombrowski had direction, I’m not sure yet with Bloom. Either he doesn’t or he’s unraveling a 5 year plan.
pwndroia – I believe Dombrowski had a lot more autonomy than Bloom, which is understandable because Dombrowski has a HOF career while this is Bloom’s highest title in his career.
5 year plans don’t work when you have the highest ticket prices in MLB and a fanbase that’s become accustomed to winning. That approach would be akin to Elon Musk shopping at Target or Walmart.
I’m not sure that’s a great comparison. Anyone can shop at Walmart bud.
Duran sucks and can’t handle the mental grind of being a big leaguer. Bello is up prematurely and will at least be a decent back end arm but hasn’t been anything to date. He’s 1-4..Houck I love. Casas has the tools to be freemanesque
Bello might be a lot better than you think. His stuff is electric, he just needs to work on command. He definitely got called up way too early but he’s already improving a lot.
I don’t think Bello would gain much by going back to the minors. He has done well there. I think keeping him up is the right move.
Only 2 of those guys were ranked at the time of their promotion but sure they’re all “top prospects.” also every team has top prospects. they’re just the best prospects in their system. That doesn’t mean they’re gonna make the All Star team.
Bello, Casas and Mayer have future All Star talent if they continue to develop. Also, a lot of people forget about Bryan Mata who was ranked higher than Bello before going down to TJS last year. He’s back now and is dominating down in the minors. There’s a very good chance that the Red Sox have (2) starters next year under the age of 25 with very good stuff and a lot of promise in Bello and Mata. While I appreciate their efforts, Wincowski and Crawford are not long term answers in the Red Sox rotation. Perhaps they can get a spot in the pen as a long man / 6th starter but neither one should have a rotation spot next year unless the Sox are besieged with pitching injuries.
Also, my favorite under the radar prospect is Cedanne Rafaela. He reminds me of a poor man’s Mookie Betts. A little undersized, plays excellent defense no matter where you play him and he has above average power for a guy his size. He could be their next Dustin Pedroia type of player if he continues his ascension. I could see him hitting 20 HRs, 30 2Bs and 30 steals in the majors on a regular basis.
varoberts – You have bad information there. Duran was ranked 29th on BA’s Top 100 list last year, how quickly we forget.
I think you know where Casas and Bello were ranked.
Dotty – A lot of people also forget about Daniel Flores, RIP.
It’s crazy how the Dombrowski haters blame him for the death of a top prospect.
I guess it’s just part of the Haters Handbook, thou must bash all Red Sox executives with the initials DD.
That’s probably why Danny Darwin never joined the Red Sox front office.
Numerically speaking, no, that is not “a lot”.
2016 draft Dalbec with a career bWAR of 0.4
2017 draft Houck 4.4
2018 draft Duran -0.8; Casas
2019 draft Anyone?
It’s still early, and some of the draftees can still develop, but that’s pretty weak results for four years.
Joe – Welcome back! I was beginning to think you believed I agreed to that bet 😉
Maybe you’ve forgotten, or maybe you’re just trolling, but I’ll remind you again about draft positioning. No excuses for the 2016 draft, but the following three drafts came after years in which DD’s teams were division champions each year and averaged 98 regular season wins … not to mention a WS championship thrown in there. So yeah, they had one of the worst draft positions in each of those three drafts.
Bloom, on the other hand, was able to draft players like Mayer (and Rule 5 players like Whitlock) because his team absolutely stunk the prior year.
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Finally
Its the right time. If they play him every day, he can lose his rookie status and the Red Sox lock in a sixth year of control. This site likes to mention the extra pick the team could get if the rookie does well in the awards. They never mention that the team loses a year of control of that player. Do you think KC would be happier with a late first round pick, or an extra year of Bobby Witt? Small market teams have six year windows. Losing Witt early narrows that to 5. Some teams will be unable, or unwilling to give out contracts like the one Julio Rodriguez got. Bloom is likely in the unwilling category.
With what happened this year, I think the Red Sox will pull a 2021/22 Twins Offseason and “retool.” Anyways, good for Casas
The Twins “retool” was relatively successful until the injuries started to pile up
I disagree. You’ll hate this – but just look at 2020
No one wants to be like the Twins, believe me
All hands on deck in boston and they desperately need the help. At least SF has a decent farm and some actual talent at the MLB level. Boston has Devers, Mayer, and basically that’s it. Not every team can have a president like Farhan, I guess.
I’m kind of curious why you wanted to make this a Farhan thread, since he wasn’t mentioned?
You haven’t seen his username?? He IS FARHAN!!! hahaha
On a serious note, I could pretty much guarantee that numerous players and execs have burner accounts on this site and use it as a petri dish & venting vessel. Sometimes it’s all but obvious.
Jumbo – You’re 100% correct, it’s an opportunity to vent anonymously without repercussions.
I remember back in 2006 when I first heard about MLBTR…A good buddy on my team told me about it…It was such an inside thing back then haha. I think it still is…Only serious fans and baseball people are on this site. With the obligatory amount of trolls of course. Though through and through, this site reigns surpreme in terms of the baseball scoop…
He tried to turn a Yankees thread about the promotion of Peraza into a Farhan thread too. It’s his thing, apparently.
mlbtraderumors.com/2022/09/yankees-to-promote-oswa…
Provided his username/handle, I guess I just expect it. Pretty harmless though. Just a hardcore SF fan. Could be Farhan himself..Who knows.
His source for his Rodon rumor, a Japanese podcast on YouTube, was pretty funny.
How the heck did he find a Japanese podcast?? Do the Angels have alternative sources as such? I can never get any good info on them except here..
Here’s Fink, busting my chops about my sources and taste in podcasts again. Domo arigato, Mr Ployed, but I have too much integrity to anonymously lie on baseball rumor comment sections.
Aisumasen, Farhan Fan.
youtube.com/watch?v=rWdRtdM-WCU
(I’d still be glad to follow a link to that podcast.)
Domo Arigato? He talks the talk Fink. I wouldn’t doubt him. I want a Japanese source on the Angels. Got a lot of Ohtani questions. Especially about his gear. He uses special stuff you can only procure in Japan..
You 2 are like peas and carrots…pb & j….rocket fuel and oxygen..
The Red Sox have a top 10 farm in baseball what are you talking about
Iseeghosts: If you look at FanGraphs farm system rankings, the Red Sox are ranked 10th in total value of the farm system right now. However, if you go by average prospect value, they rank 16th. The Red Sox have a lot of lower future value prospects which brings the total value up, but the average value is lower.
Actually the comparisons between Boston and SF are lengthy. Big Market teams at end of competitive window, around 500, decent farms, they are almost exact replicas
Average – You forgot one other similarity, both with highly overrated virtue signaling managers.
The Giants are 62-68. Sure they have lots of talented individuals. By chance are any of them talented at baseball?
Ketch – Their manager is putting an end to gun violence, so leave them alone.
Casas has spent almost 2000 years in the minors. I hope he’s ready by now…
Id say thats some serious service time manipulation.
Did they even have much of a draft in 208? I’ve read the scouting reports on the Disciples’ offspring, nothing there of note.
BC or AD?
So many sandal-related injuries during that era…
Hahahahaha That was pretty good….You gotta post more. You are a funny individual good sir.
Some ballplayers still juiced back then but their stellar play was always dismissed as “miracles.”
They talked about that one kid who could walk on water like he was the second coming. Got more hype than Ohtani…
Trumbo, you triggered a memory of an old baseball/Bible comedy routine. I had to Google it because it’s been about 20 years since I heard it and couldn’tremember the comedian’s name. If you want to hear it, search Dan St. Paul.
Michael Landon also told a baseball in the Bible joke to his daughter Laura on an episode of Little House on the Prarie:
“Where is baseball mentioned in the Bible?”
“I don’t know. Where?”
“First line: In the big inning…”
Definitely a Landon/Little House fan from way back. I’ll indeed check it out. .This site is the ultimate cheap entertainment.
Yes I remember Jimmie Foxx well.
Before Cherington or after Duquette?
He would of made it sooner but the Romans blocked his promotion to the majors
Bloody Romans! What have they ever done for us?
Positive – “Casas has spent almost 2000 years in the minors. I hope he’s ready”
…Well 500 years were during Covid with no games, so his minor league stay is not as long as it seems. He was also drafted at age 18 and is now 22!
About time
one year too late, he has a -0.2 war, less then replacement level whole year
Where are you finding WAR values for minor league players?
Dombrowski drafted Casas. Perhaps he’ll do something to rehabilitate Dave’s reputation around here. Good luck to him.
Here he is, the big button
I wonder how good casas is going to be. I think he will be a solid major leaguer and all his peripherals like plate diszipline, contact, power look promising plus he is young for the level but while he has always performed solidly he usually was more of a mid to high 800s ops.
That is very solid of course but if you look at some of the best first basemen they have put up like high 900s or even 1000s OPS numbers.
Sure casas is also quite young for the level but I think his prospect hype is more based on his potential, age and projection than actual production.
Not that his production has been bad but many other teams have non top 100 ranked first base prospects who post similar numbers, usually prospect guys have the strategy of “Don’t rank first base prospects in the top100 unless he posts insane numbers (ie. 300/400/500+)”.
I’m sure casas will be a solid major leaguer who posts like 110-120 wRC+ numbers but not sure he warrants a top30 prospect ranking which suggests he does have paul Goldschmidt kind of upside (who had high 900s to low 1000 ops numbers in the minors), I think casas numbers warrant more a low top100 ranking.
Of course his power could make another jump at his age and he could be a superstar but just by his current minor league production I think he is a little overrated.
Fangraphs likes him:
fangraphs.com/prospects/the-board-scouting-and-sta…
There are exceptions; e.g., this was Willie Stargell’s stat line in AAA at age 22, the year he was brought up to the majors: .276/.344/.513/.857
baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=sta…
He hit for more power, but the average and OPS are pretty close to Triston’s in AAA this year.
This was Matt Olson’s line at age 22 in AAA the year he got his first cup of coffee with the A’s: .235/.335/.422/.757
baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=ols…
So much for Bloom saying days ago that he will stay at the Minors until the right time. Unless this is the right time in his eyes.
… Bloom has no plan.
pwndroia – Management lies, that will never change. Sometimes it’s justified because they don’t want to tip their hand.
Bobby Dalbec all over again.
Not the same player. Casas has a LOT more contact and takes more walks. He’s a more complete hitter with less speed. Defensively, Casas has the better glove too. Dalbec has more power and sells out for that power a lot more than Casas and I’m sure that’s part of what played into the decision to send him down. Especially over the last month and a half, Casas earned his way to BOS.
… did not say they were the same player. The result will be Duran & Dalbec all over again – hype.
What reason would Baseball America have to hype Casas? They are the ones that ranked him #19.
The first and only draft pick to make it from the 208 draft! ♂️
1,814 years in the minors. That’s persistence.
Fink – LOL! Yeah it always amazes me when people will write just one sentence, and not even bother to glance at what they wrote before posting.
On top of that, what they were trying to convey is completely wrong. Duran was selected in the 7th round of the 2018 draft.
A poor man’s Franchy Cordero.
Casas got nearly three times as many games in AAA as Dalbec did.
2020 was 2020, and hindsight is hindsight, but for the most part, a 30-35 K% guy tends to not be someone you want to basically jump straight from AA.
I hope AAA helps rebuild some confidence and he can come up and help mid season 2023.
Really happy to see him called up it was about time. I’m sure he is going to have an adjustment period to big league pitchers and this is the perfect time for him to be up and a taste. He seems like the kid of guy that takes a bit of time to adjust at each level after he is called up. Hopefully this is the beginning of the Casas era at first base.
Doty have you seen Rafaela he looks like a Mookie at the plate he has obviously patterned himself after him. He took a huge leap forward this year offensively his defense was never in question he always had a floor of versatile late inning defensive replacement but now with the offense showing up he could be so much more he could be the future centerfielder for the Red Sox.
FINALLY! Tristan…love the patience with the 3-2 counts! BUT I have watched quite a few belt high middle middle offerings go by…there is such a thing as too much patience…be a bit more aggressive in the zone! It will improve the .111 BA start. Bobby D…we still need you as the RH option there…ya just need to keep the head & eyes on the ball all the way to the barrell…see it connect & you’ll be fine for 40+ long balls a year. Really good D from both of you!