Alex Cora made the kind of move that says more than any postgame quote could. In the eighth inning of a tie game on Wednesday, the Red Sox manager pulled Triston Casas â a former first-round pick and supposed cornerstone of the franchiseâs youth movement â in favor of utility man Romy Gonzalez.
Casas had struck out twice and looked lost doing it. Lefty Brendon Little was on the mound, but Casas has actually hit southpaws better than righties this year. That didnât matter. Cora saw enough.
It was a quiet but telling decision, the kind you make when your belief in a player starts to flicker.
Casas is now slashing .181/.289/.300 with three home runs, 11 RBIs and a .589 OPS through 27 games. The Red Sox came into 2025 banking on the 24-year-old to bounce back after a frustrating, injury-wrecked 2024. What theyâve gotten instead is a confusing mess of bad at-bats, occasional “hard contact,” and growing doubt.
There have been flashes. He homered in back-to-back games to open the Seattle series last week. He collected two hits Tuesday in Toronto. But those bursts havenât been enough to fully restore confidence â not in Cora, not in the front office, and increasingly, not in the fanbase.
Signs of Life or Just Noise? Red Sox Brass Walks the Line on Casas
The timing of Casasâ struggles couldnât be worse. The Red Sox donât have an obvious replacement at first base. Thatâs part of what makes the situation so thorny. Romy Gonzalez, who pinch-hit for Casas on Wednesday, isnât a natural first baseman â more of a versatile depth piece than a long-term answer. So even as Cora starts to make late-game moves that reflect diminished trust, the question remains: who else can they turn to?
So what now?
On WEEIâs âGreg Hill Show,â host Jermaine Wiggins asked Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow if itâs time to consider a different direction at first. Breslow didnât shut the door. âOur job is to put the best team on the field that we possibly can,â he told WEEIâs Scott McLaughlin.
Thatâs not exactly a vote of confidence.
To Breslowâs credit, he acknowledged the tug-of-war between patience and performance. âItâs hard to stay patient,â he admitted. âItâs hard to stay patient for all of us, Triston included.â He cited small signs of progress â better timing, more aggressive swings on hittable pitches â but thatâs a thin rope to cling to with nearly a month gone in the season.
The Red Sox need Casas to hit. Not just for his own development, but because they built a lineup that assumes he will. Rafael Devers canât do all the lifting. Bostonâs margin for error is razor-thin in a competitive AL East.
Casas still has time to turn things around, but the leash isnât what it once was. Coraâs move Wednesday made that crystal clear. If the swing doesnât come around soon, the conversation around Casas will shift from âwhenâ to âif.â
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