FORT MYERS, Fla. — Things were much different for Triston Casas two springs ago. Then 24, the big first baseman was riding high after f inishing third in the voting for the American League Rookie of the Year and looked like a cornerstone piece for the Red Sox for years to come. Extension talks took place. The Red Sox viewed him as having 40-homer potential as a middle-of-the-order contributor. Netflix made Casas a featured part of an eight-part documentary series on the 2024 Red Sox season.
Two injury-plagued seasons later, Casas finds himself in a much different place heading into 2026. A rib cage tear limited him to just 63 games in a slog of a 2024 season. In 2025, he struggled for a month before blowing out his knee on a season-ending play at first base on May 2. Casas, now 26, has lots to prove, and with veteran Willson Contreras on board to be the starting first baseman, seemingly not much runway to prove it.
“You see cases like this all the time where guys get injured and sometimes their careers get derailed and sometimes they bounce back,” he said last week. “I guess we’re just going to see how I bounce back from this.”
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The Netflix cameras seemed to follow Casas everywhere he went early in the 2024 season, with Greg Whiteley’s crew following the South Florida native as he ventured to a local nail salon and helped Jarren Duran try to fix his broken-down car outside Fenway Park in “The Clubhouse: A Year with the Red Sox‚” which premiered last April. While some teammates didn’t want the filming to interfere with their day jobs, Casas embraced the chaos from the jump, sitting down for multiple interviews and becoming one of the stars of the show. His quirky, authentic personality was a natural fit for the spotlight.
Opening up to the cameras was an easy call for Casas, who has never shied away from letting fans in on his thoughts, unusual pregame routines, interests and desires. His willingness to be in the Netflix show, though, didn’t mean he couldn’t wait to see it when released. Even during a summer he spent mostly laid up after surgery to repair a torn patellar tendon, Casas never found himself scrolling to the sports documentaries section of Netflix to watch his own performance.
“I haven’t watched it,” he said. “Just felt like it hasn’t been something that I’ve wanted to watch back at the moment. I eventually will.
“I don’t know what role I played. I mean, I know I’m featured, but I don’t know particularly how much screen time I particularly got. I answer a lot of questions about it from other people that bring it up to me about certain scenes and specific moments. I remember the moments, of course, and I remember specifically what I said. But I haven’t gotten to watching it.”
Casas, ever in tune with the reactions to things he does, is unapologetic in how he carries himself. He’ll continue to paint his nails — “ At the end of the day, this is just my video game character,” he has said — and post cryptic Instagram captions in which he is “talking to one person.” The pregame sunbathing will continue, too, as will other parts of the Casas experience. True to himself, Casas isn’t planning on making any off-field changes to try to further endear himself to fans who might think differently of him after two lost seasons.
“Your likability grows when you’re consistent and you’re out there playing and contributing to wins,” Casas said. “I can only hope that the fans can empathize with the situations that have happened over the last couple years. When you put your body on the line for an organization like this one, for a city, for hopefully, a championship, for some type of winning, that’s what happens.
“I think everybody wants to see how I’m going to respond to this, and if I come back a better player, then my relationship with the fans is going to be better than ever.”
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When Craig Breslow took over as Boston ’s chief baseball officer in the fall of 2023, he made it clear to the organization that he intended to be aggressive in his attempts to lock up talented young members of the organization on long-term contracts. In the months to come, he’d sign starter Brayan Bello (six years, $55 million) and outfielder Ceddanne Rafaela (eight years, $50 million) to early extensions. In 2025, he locked up Garrett Crochet (six years, $170 million), Roman Anthony (eight years, $130 million) and Kristian Campbell (eight years, $60 million).
At the outset of his tenure, though, Casas was one of Breslow’s top targets for a deal. After a stellar 2023 that saw Casas hit .263 with 24 homers, 65 RBIs and an .856 OPS, the Sox made multiple attempts to get a long-term deal done with him. True to form, it was something Casas acknowledged publicly almost immediately.
Another offer was made right around the time Bello put pen to paper on his deal but Casas, under advisement from his agents at MVP Sports Group (who have since left for Roc Nation Sports) decided again to decline. In 2025, Casas earned the major league minimum of $760,000 and in 2026, he’ll earn $1.61 million as an arbitration-eligible player. With three years left under Red Sox control, he’s not an extension candidate at this time.
There’s a case to be made, then, after two years of injuries, that Casas missed his window of opportunity to sign a big deal. It’s not something he’s thinking about.
“I don’t have any regrets about the way that I handled the situation,” Casas said. “In the moments that I was not agreeing to anything long-term, I felt like I could take the field and post an .850 OPS rolling out of bed. I was just that confident, and I still think I am that type of player. I didn’t think that ’23 reflected my best baseball, and it was still great. Now, I feel like my best baseball is still ahead of me.”
If there’s one thing Casas minds, it’s being labeled someone who is “injury-prone.” His 2024 injury, in which he tore cartilage in his rib cage on a hard swing in Pittsburgh , was a freak occurrence doctors likened to a “car crash” within his body . His May knee injury played out in front of everyone and ended his season in an instant. That Casas has spent countless hours rehabbing over the past two years doesn’t mean he believes he’s susceptible to further injuries.
“I don’t particularly feel like I can change anything from the two injuries,” he said. “Last year, on May 2, I was feeling fantastic. My lower half was in a really great place. I was feeling strong. The numbers up to that point hadn’t dictated how I was feeling. I’ve had two seasons that I got off to a slow start. I had ‘24 where I got off to a good one, then on one swing, hurt the left side of my body, which was essentially a non-contact injury. It was before contact. It’s just really stuff that I haven’t been able to explain.
“I don’t take anything personally and I don’t have any envy or jealousy of anybody else that’s had a better bill of health than I have,” he continued. “I did have a lot of confidence going into the ’24 season that I was gonna continue to be a top-10 player at the position that I (had been), and I still think I’m right there. Nothing’s changed with me physically, and mentally I’m still putting my best foot forward to prepare every single day.”
The days re-learning how to walk and taking small steps toward recovery have been long, Casas said, but the years have gone by fast.
“The last two years have felt like a blur,” he said. “They’ve gone by so quickly. I feel like I remember the offseason of ’23 after the rookie season like it was yesterday. I’ve had a couple injuries in between that have made me a better person, a better player and a better teammate and I just have better perspective overall.”
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Casas was Boston’s Opening Day starter in each of the last three seasons but knows that won’t be the case in 2026. Even if he picks up steam and is fully ready to play by March 26, that spot will go to Contreras, a three-time All-Star Casas has described as “a better player than me (who) has been for his entire career.”
The Contreras trade, plus the fact manager Alex Cora will cycle through four starting-caliber outfielders (plus Masataka Yoshida ) in the designated hitter spot makes it unclear where Casas’ at-bats will come from. A trade is possible but seems unlikely with Casas’ value seemingly low. For now, he’ll keep rehabbing in hopes of being able to contribute early in the season. Cora raved last week about how strong Casas looks in team fielding drills and Casas said he believes he’ll be ready to play on Opening Day “for some affiliate,” hinting a minor league rehab assignment is possible to begin the year. He still needs to clear some hurdles related to baserunning and sliding.
“I really have been leaning on the people in this org to feed me the information that I should be telling myself,” Casas said. “And everybody’s telling me similar things along the lines of this: I’m an important part and that I’m going to play a big role at some point in this year. When I’m healthy and I’m right, I have the ability to impact the middle of a lineup for any team. That’s what’s been being relayed to me here.”
The depth chart looks different than it has in recent years and Casas, formerly viewed as one of Boston’s young stars, has a lot to prove. It’s a challenge he’s embracing in 2026, a year he views as more of an opportunity than a “make-or-break” moment.
“It means a chance to feel like things are back to normal,” Casas said. “Normalcy, for me, is great performance, amazing health and a great example of attitude, effort and ability — things that haven’t been displayed over the last two years. It’s an opportunity to get back to the caliber of player I know I can be.
“I haven’t ever had a problem with the things that people say about me. Everybody’s completely entitled to their own opinions, and I know the work that I put in hasn’t (been) necessarily reflected (in) the results that I’ve gotten. That’s not to say that this year can’t be different and from this point going forward, my career can’t take a turn for the best. We can have this all be a laughing point in 10 years.”
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