The Boston Red Sox are in desperate need of a shake-up following a 10-19 start that has put them in the basement of the American League East, a whopping 10.5 games out of first place.
While the roster currently appears to have many holes, some fans are quick to propose the promotion of first baseman Triston Casas, MLB Pipeline's No. 16 prospect who is currently playing at Triple-A Worcester.
The offense ranks 27th in runs scored this season, and it's reasonable to assume that one roster move is not going to change the entire dynamic of the lineup. That said, the Red Sox fanbase is willing to grasp at straws to figure out what is happening to a team that is very talented on paper.
Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom is not ready to make a panic move just yet, and informed the media why promoting Casas to Boston likely would not warrant the results fans are hoping for.
"He had a really interesting and great developmental year last year but just because of how it was broken up with the Olympics, the moving levels, he wasn't necessarily in one place for long enough to really have the league make a lot of adjustments to him and then for him having to adjust in return," Bloom said, as transcribed by MassLive's Christopher Smith.
Casas' longest tenure in professional baseball was 118 games with the Single-A Greenville Drive before the COVID-19 shutdown. Since then, he's spent two games with Single-A Salem, 77 games with Double-A Portland (broken up by the aforementioned Olympics), and 38 games with Triple-A Worcester spanning across two seasons.
"One of the things about the game today more than at any point maybe ever, certainly at any point I've been in it, is when you get to the major leagues, there is already a book on you. We have a lot of information," Bloom said. "And you will get attacked the way you should be attacked from pitch one. So going through that period of making those adjustments is really important I think for any young hitter."
It's better to see Casas battle through adversity in the minors instead of getting shell-shocked at the MLB level. One other area of weakness is his ability to hit left-handed pitching.
"Obviously looking at how he does vs. lefties, looking at how he does vs. big league stuff is really important just knowing how here any young hitter is going to get attacked when they come up here," Bloom said.
Casas is hitting 4-for-26 (.154) against lefties. It's likely that Bloom would need to see an improvement in that area before promoting the talented prospect.
