The Boston Red Sox are one of the two best baserunning teams in the American League, they could well be only the second team in franchise history to lead the league in stolen bases, they are the most athletic of the seven teams Alex Cora has managed and they have elite major league prospects at the ready. And yet here they are a .500 team 36 games into the season and pushed to a pivotal point by the season-ending knee injury to first baseman Triston Casas.
Ready or not, the Red Sox are on the clock to figure out a path forward—and it is not the stopgap measure of Romy Gonzalez and Abraham Toro at first base.
Last year Boston responded to an injury to Casas with no urgency. It gave 114 games at first base to Dom Smith, Garrett Cooper, Bobby Dalbec and Gonzalez. Those four stand-ins hit .236 with seven home runs.
That kind of patchwork answer won’t work this year. This year is different. It is different because of where the Red Sox are on the winning curve, because of the investments in talent and dollars for Garrett Crochet and Alex Bregman and because outfielder Roman Anthony and infielder Marcelo Mayer are right behind infielder/outfielder Kristian Campbell as big league impact players. In their past 500 games the Red Sox are 246–254. There can be no more wheel spinning.
Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow would have preferred to leave Anthony and Mayer in Triple A for more fine-tuning over the next couple of months. Such a luxury is gone with Casas out for the year and Anthony and Mayer tearing it up at Worcester.
Think of Breslow’s challenge as a puzzle that needs to be solved. With Casas out, the Red Sox are looking at giving too many at bats to players proven to be decent utility players but not frontline players on a contending team: Toro (1,299 career plate appearances, .285 OBP, 80 OPS+), Gonzalez (510, .283, 86), Ceddanne Rafaela (776, .276, 80) and David Hamilton (403, .286, 81).
The puzzle is to figure how to configure a lineup with at bats for Rafael Devers, Campbell, Anthony, Mayer and eventually Masataka Yoshida, who still is rehabbing from offseason shoulder surgery. Here’s what they say they don’t want to do: Ask Devers, Anthony or Mayer to play first base. Devers was the reluctant DH who has learned to accept and even thrive in that role.
“We asked him to do something that he didn’t agree with, right?” Cora said. “And he’s done an amazing job adjusting to it. So, I see him as a DH right now. He’s doing an outstanding job, getting to his routine preparation-wise, and I don’t think it is fair to just [say], ‘Now we need you here.’”
That thinking makes perfect sense—for “right now.” The Casas injury just happened. Breslow and his staff need time to develop a strategy for the next five months, not the next week. I would ask Devers if he has interest in working at first base for the next month before games—his call. Why not see if that is an option? There is no guarantee he would thrive at the position. He was the league’s worst defensive third baseman before the team signed Bregman. The position is more complicated than people think. Even Casas had his limitations. The Red Sox had to adjust their defensive positioning against right-handed hitters because Casas was having trouble getting to the bag in time; he could not start as far into that 3.5 hole where most teams like to station first basemen.
What to do with Anthony is also tricky. He turns 21 next week and as Cora said, “We see him as an impactful outfielder.”
Rafaela, the incumbent center fielder, is a whiz of a defender. But his long swing (.217 career against 95-plus mph) and lack of plate discipline (45% career chase rate) indicate he needs more time to develop as a hitter. His at bats cannot be guaranteed on account of defensive prowess.
As with Devers, the Red Sox are not enamored with asking Anthony to learn a new position on the fly. He’s going to impact this team—soon—but it does not appear to be at first base.
Cora called him “one of the best players in baseball.” Noticeably, he did not attach a qualifier such as “among prospects.”
“At one point, we have to make tough decisions, right?” Cora said. “But that’s what happens when you get to this point as an organization, right? You have a lot of good players and then you roll with the best 26.”
The trick is how to best deploy those 26 best players, especially if Devers is not an option at first base. Campbell is a versatile player who can play anywhere. Trevor Story ranks in the bottom third among defensive shortstops but would seem athletic enough to make a switch if Mayer were ready to play shortstop. Finding the next Dom Smith (Anthony Rizzo? Vaughn Grissom from AAA?) is more patchwork.
The disruption from the Casas injury should not distract from how the Red Sox are building a playoff-capable team. Their starting pitching has been excellent, with more depth than they had last season. And their athleticism on the bases and on defense should help them win close games despite a dreadful start in such tight ones (4–9 in one-run games).
When I asked Cora if this was his most athletic team, he responded, “I believe so.” He pointed out that Bregman “is moving a lot better than the last few years” when Bregman battled some leg ailments, and that Story is “a freak athlete.”
“Athletic-wise,” he said, “we have to be one of the top teams in the big leagues.”
The Red Sox and Tigers are rated as the top two baserunning teams in the American League. With 43 steals in 36 games, the Red Sox lead the league in stolen bases. They have led the league in steals once—in 1935, when Billy Werber paced the team with 29 stolen bases despite a bad toe from kicking a dugout bucket filled with ammonia water. (Poor Billy didn’t know the bucket was reinforced with iron to discourage pitcher Lefty Grove from his bad habit of kicking the bucket in fits of frustration, spraying ammonia water on teammates.) This is the kind of running, daring team Cora always has wanted, especially in today’s pitching-dominated climate.
“We talk about it with the way pitching is at this level, you cannot rely on banging the whole time,” Cora said. “You have to find ways. … It is a very hard hitting environment. Everybody’s throwing hard. Everybody has three fastballs. If that pitcher is locked in that day, good luck. I mean, it’s that hard, so you have to find ways to score runs.”
The Red Sox may be a .500 team, but their upside is a dynamic team with high-end talent and multiple ways to win baseball games. To get there, they knew they would face what Cora called the “tough decisions” about how best to utilize their talent. Those decisions are no longer on the horizon. They are here now.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as After Triston Casas Injury, Talented Red Sox Urgently Need a Clear Plan.