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Understandably, Red Sox first baseman Triston Casas may be a bit bored. He’s an MLB ballplayer who has not been able to play ball this year, out since April with a dreaded oblique injury. Perhaps in his boredom, Casas stirred up some trouble this weekend while rehabbing in Triple A Worcester. And he’s been taken to task for it.
Casas told two reporters, Chris Cotillo of MassLive and Rob Bradford of WEEI, in an interview that he was feeling great in coming back from the injury, and was 100% with his swing.
Shortly after that, he delivered a more disturbing outlook on the injury.
“Right now when I make contact with the ball, it feels like someone’s stabbing me with a knife right in the ribs,” Casas said on Friday, per Jason Ounpraseuth of NESN. … “Right when (the injury) happened I felt like I got shot with a gun, so it’s dulled down.”
The conflicting reports, on the record, raised the haunches of media members who cover the Red Sox, but then, no one really cares about the haunches of us in the media. The worse part was that Casas ticked off those in the organization, including manager Alex Cora and the training staff, who had to figure out whether Casas was really feeling that much pain.
He wasn’t.
Veteran Red Sox reporter Sean McAdam, speaking with MassLive colleague Cotillo on their “Fenway Rundown,” podcast, was blunt in reaction to Casas: “It’s not funny, it’s not cute, he is being a gigantic pain the [expletive].”
Triston Casas Has ‘Rankled Some Veterans With His Behavior’
Much was expected from Casas this season after last year’s stellar rookie debut, in which he batted .263 with an .856 OPS, knocking 24 home runs in 132 games. He was hitting .244 with an .857 OPS this year when the injury struck, and initial hopes that he might return in early July have faded into weak hopes of a mid-August return.
It’s been remarkable that the Red Sox’s offense has been as good as it has been without him in the middle of it. But chemistry has been fine without him, especially with some concern that his all-too-quirky personality bothers some older players.
“We’ve seen him rankle some veterans with his behavior,” McAdam said. “He’s quirky, we get it. So, that’s fine. We encourage interesting personalities. We welcome them, as reporters, and it’s fun to have a guy who does not speak in cliché. Certainly, Triston Casas will never be accused of being boring or traditional. That’s fine, bring those guys on—the more, the better.
“But when you start deliberately misleading people, when you are offering contradictory reports on your own physical well-being, then it stops being funny. … It does not sit well with the organization and a number of people were unhappy with him playing these games, not literally, but playing these rhetorical games about how he felt.”
Red Sox Could Get Star Back Within a Week
Casas does have five hits and three walks in 21 plate appearances since checking in for his Worcester rehab assignment. He is batting .294 and has three doubles among those hits, before Wednesday’s game in Syracuse. The Red Sox still want him to ramp up more, and want to see him play three straight games without pain before bringing him back to Boston. He’s done it twice, and could play his third game on Thursday if the weather holds up.
Casas could be back on the roster sometime during the next homestand, which runs from Friday through next Wednesday, August 14.
He will likely have some apologizing to do when he gets back to the Red Sox, though.
“The Red Sox were not happy, they called him out. They said, look, this stuff has got to stop,” McAdam said. “The training staff was running around, did he re-injure himself? I hope Casas has kind of learned his lesson. …
“You can always tell when Cora is angry when he says, ‘I’m not angry.’ He felt he needed to say something in Casas’s defense publicly, but it was clear from his body language, from the tone of his voice, that he was not thrilled with the confusion and the chaos this created in the organization.”
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