Chief baseball officer Craig Breslow said just last month that no one on the Red Sox roster was untouchable to help improve the club in 2025 and beyond.
Even though Breslow has said no one is untouchable, he appears to be puzzled by the Triston Casas trade chatter on social media and in parts of the media.
“I’m not sure where that’s coming from,” Breslow said Tuesday to reporters at the GM Meetings in San Antonio. “Casas is a guy that we think has 40-home run potential. He’s young and also has great strike zone discipline and controls an at-bat. We’re excited he’s on our team.”
Rumors swirled that Casas could become a trade candidate after Ken Rosenthal suggested the Sox could deal the young slugger to the Mariners for one of their starters and potentially a right-handed bat.
Mariners general manager Justin Hollander doesn’t envision trading one of his starters this offseason.
“If you have a spectrum of Plan A to Plan Z, I think [dealing with one of those starters] is Plan Z,” said Hollander per Boston Globe’s Alex Speier. “Those guys are excellent big league pitchers today. If you remove the wins that they provide to our big league team now and replace them with an equal number of wins, just in a different spot on the field, I don’t know that you actually got better.”
If the Mariners change their mind and get an offer they can’t refuse from the Red Sox, Rosenthal proposed a scenario in which Boston could sign Alex Bregman or Willy Adames to play the hot corner and move Rafael Devers to first base.
Breslow said here Monday he still has had no conversations about moving Devers off third.
“No, the conversations I’ve had with Raffy to date have largely just been about checking in and making sure that he’s got everything he needs, seeing how he’s feeling,” Breslow said.
“Any conversation that we would have about that is going to happen internally before it goes external. At the same time, we saw progress on the defensive side. And it’s unclear to what extent the knees and the shoulders impacted his ability to defend at third. But what we’re after is putting a winning team on the field. And we’ll have conversations as needed, as things go, but as of right now, that’s not where we are.”
While there’s no concrete reported rumors of a possible Casas trade, he didn’t help matters when he told Boston Globe’sJulian McWilliams that he’s thought about Boston dealing him.
“I think that the team and the organization should continue to strive for a championship whether I’m in the plans or not,” he said. “I don’t know what the front office has in store for this offseason in terms of restructuring the roster to try to become a playoff team.
“I want to be a part of the plans to make that happen, but if not, and they want to seek an outside source for me to try to bolster the roster, that’s well within their ability.”
Despite pondering life outside of Boston, Casas told McWilliams he wants to stay and win with the Red Sox.
“I think that the team and the organization should continue to strive for a championship whether I’m in the plans or not,” he said. “I don’t know what the front office has in store for this offseason in terms of restructuring the roster to try to become a playoff team.
“I want to be a part of the plans to make that happen, but if not, and they want to seek an outside source for me to try to bolster the roster, that’s well within their ability.”
Casas played just 63 games last season following a rib cage injury that limited him to .241/.337/.462/.800 line, 13 homers, eight doubles, and 32 RBIs in 243 plate appearances in 2024.
