Quick Notes on Brasier and Casas
With James Paxton’s return and Joely Rodriguez, Kutter Crawford, and Garrett Whitlock set to be activated at various points over the next 10 days, it’s finally real roster decision time for the Red Sox front office. In the past, I have criticized them for having preserving depth as their compass on pitching decisions, especially when it came to older, fungible middle relievers. Hopefully last night’s DFA of Ryan Brasier is a sign that they like where their pitching infrastructure is at, and they are putting their best foot forward.
Brasier was an incredible find after the 4th of July in 2018 and was nails in the postseason, helping the Red Sox win a World Series. He will always be a great part of that team’s story.
Since then, it has been merely quick flashes of dominance, with mostly mediocre to poor results. Between 2019-2023, 78 relief pitchers have worked at least 170 MLB innings, Brasier ranked last with a 5.14 ERA. Between May 2022 and May 2023, 59 runs (55 earned) scored in his 76 innings pitched. It got to be an untenable situation, and guaranteeing him $2M last fall proved to be the poor decision it looked like at the time.
Triston Casas is working through his rookie break-in period and the results have started to turn around for him. His OPS has jumped from .563 to .703 over this last 9 games, going 10 for 26 with a 2B, 2 HR, 5 BB and 4 K.
He has an elite eye, but was bordering on passivity to start the season with some uncharacteristic chase. Recently he recalibrated and his in-zone swing percentage is up and chase rate is back to a dominate level. This is the formula for Casas to become an offensive force in time.
As you can see below, early this season there were a huge amount of mishit balls from Casas - he was a tick off - and he couldn’t buy a hit even when he made good contact. A lot of that has been cleaned up recently, and he has even been unlucky on a couple of titanic shots that somehow ended up staying in parks over the last week.
