FORT MYERS, Fla. — Throughout the offseason, Craig Breslow offered a repeated explanation as to why a trade of Triston Casas, though not an impossibility, was unlikely. The Red Sox chief baseball officer regularly described the first baseman as capable of posting 40/120 seasons — 40 home runs, 120 RBIs.
Breslow offered the statement matter-of-factly, something that perhaps obscured just how bold the suggestion was and is.
Last year, just two players in the big leagues cleared those marks: MVPs Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge. In Red Sox history, just nine players have had 40/120 seasons — mostly comprising a who’s who of great sluggers in team history. J.D. Martinez, David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, Mo Vaughn, Tony Armas, Jim Rice, Carl Yastrzemski, Ted Williams, and Jimmie Foxx. (Rico Petrocelli and Dick Stuart are the only Red Sox to hit 40 homers with fewer than 120 RBIs.)
Are such marks and stature achievable for Casas? In 222 big league games, he’s hit 42 homers while driving in 109 runs — a 162-game average of 31 homers and 80 RBIs. That said, over the final 54 games of his rookie season in 2023, he hit .317/.417/.617 with 15 homers and 38 RBIs — numbers that would project to 45 homers and 134 RBIs over 162 games.
What does Casas think of the suggestion that he can attain 40/120?
“I think that is the expectation for the first baseman of the Boston Red Sox. I think if I’m not able to do that, then I don’t deserve a job here,” said Casas. “I don’t feel that’s out of my reach. I feel like that’s something that’s very possible for me to accomplish.
“I appreciate [Breslow’s] vote of confidence in myself, but that is the caliber of hitter that I need to be to stay in this position that I am. I’ve put in plenty of work to be able to go out there and accomplish it, but it’s just a matter of staying healthy and being out there on the field for, say, 150-plus games. I think that it’s very reasonable.”
Again, that matter-of-fact characterization may obscure the quest for extraordinary achievement. But ultimately, the exact numbers meant to describe Casas’s potential mean less than the idea that he still has elite middle-of-the-order potential.
And the Red Sox have seen encouraging signs when it comes to the possibility that Casas realizes that stature (while treating his 1-for-11 start to to spring training games with four walks and five strikeouts as almost irrelevant in assessing the quality of his at-bats).
“He looks different [than 2024],” manager Alex Cora said, comparing Casas now to the form he displayed while trying to return to the lineup from a rib cartilage tear down the stretch last season. “He looks different in a good way.”
Cora noted that Casas has been emphasizing the ability to drive the ball to left-center, an approach that has resulted in the lefthanded hitter crushing pitches from the opposite power alley to the triangle.
Casas noted that he is trying to let the ball travel deeper into the strike zone to diminish the frequency with which he chases pitches. He believes an effort to focus on driving the ball to left-center — particularly with Fenway Park’s inviting dimensions — will allow him extra time to make decisions about whether or not to swing and then unload on pitches with a compact swing in a way befitting an elite hitter.
“My swing plays well in our home field,” said Casas. “If I’m able to control the inner part of the plate and drive it to left-center, I think that’s the Mount Rushmore of a great hitter, being able to take an inside pitch and drive it to the opposite field. I think that’s the next step in my game.
“I know my strength is up the middle to right-center. That’s what I get this opportunity to do this job for, is to drive the ball in the air, hit homers, hit doubles, and a lot of the time it’s going to happen to the pull side. But I feel that if I have that mind-set of driving middle, middle-in pitches towards left-center — and that doesn’t mean left field, that doesn’t mean down the left-field line, I want to hit it hard towards the shortstop — I feel like it’s going to help me stay on other pitches towards right-center.”
Of course, the baseline for everything Casas can do in 2025 — and beyond — is health. He’s coming off a campaign in which the act of swinging ripped the cartilage from his rib cage, an injury almost never seen without collisions.
“There was no explanation for it,” said Casas. “The doctors had never seen it.”
Unsurprisingly, after missing roughly four months, he struggled in his return — both with lingering discomfort from the injury and rust from his time on the sidelines. He hit .239/.333/.433 with an uncharacteristically high 33 percent strikeout rate in 41 games after his return.
But he believes the injury represents a completed episode, and that he is poised to take aim at building upon his end-of-season performance in 2023.
“I’m feeling great now. It was battle-tested over the offseason. I twisted, rotated, strengthened it tri-fold,” said Casas. “I think that part of it is behind me, and my lower half is feeling great. So I feel like I’m in the best shape that I’ve ever been. I’m 25. I’m reaching that peak physical ability of a man. We’ll see how much bigger and faster and stronger I get, but I really like where I’m at right now. I think it’s all culminating at the right time for a big year.”
How big? Time will tell. But certainly, as the Red Sox look to take the leap into contending status, a full season of a healthy Casas could prove transformative for their lineup.
Alex Speier can be reached at alex.speier@globe.com. Follow him @alexspeier.