Alex Cora On Offensive Plan For Red Sox Rookie Triston Casas

The Boston Red Sox coaching staff has started a plan to work with rookie first baseman Triston Casas on making him a better fielder and on Wednesday, manager Alex Cora addressed the 23-year-old’s offensive struggles with WEEI’s Andy Gresh and Christian Fauria.

“Offensively, you start looking at his on-base percentage, his chase rate, how hard he’s hitting the ball,” Cora told WEEI. “Yeah, everybody gets caught up on batting average and right now it’s .199 or .200, but he’s been getting on base, he’s been hitting the ball hard. If you look at his season, and obviously you can’t turn the clock back, but he’s hit four (homers) to center field.”

Casas is slashing .202/.324/.367 this season with 38 hits, including seven home runs, in 188 at-bats to go with 35 walks.

“One of the things we want him to do — and this is something we had added through his program offensively — is to hit the fastball. Get to it, and he’s doing that. I do believe there’s still more to left-center; that’s what he did last year,” Cora explained. “Right now sometimes all of his hard-hit balls are top-spinners to the pull side. He was a guy who was able to stay through the ball and hit the ball in the air to left-center, and he hasn’t done that yet.”

“He believes in his routines, but obviously, this is a different game.”

Red Sox manager Alex Cora on Triston Casas

Casas has his routines in place, something Red Sox bench coach Ramón Vázquez and infield coach Carlos Febles have addressed defensively, so Cora reiterated he needs to make some changes offensively as well.

“I always said that I respect Triston, his structure, the way he goes about it,” Cora said. “Not too many guys that come to the big leagues have conviction about what they need to do. He really believes in his routines, but obviously, this is a different game. It’s a little bit faster and you have to make adjustments on the fly, and that’s what we’re doing right now.”