Is Triston Casas a fantasy breakout candidate? | Baseball Bar-B-Cast
Yahoo Sports senior MLB analysts Jordan Shusterman and Jake Mintz are joined by fantasy baseball analyst Dalton Del Don to examine the fantasy potential of the Boston Red Sox infielder.
Video Transcript
JORDAN SHUSTERMAN: Let's start with Triston Casas. This is someone who I believe you are a lot higher on than your compatriots in the Yahoo Baseball world. Tell me about your excitement for Triston Casas, because I know I certainly share it.
DALTON DEL DON: Yeah, I mean, Casas hit .317 after the All-Star break last season, when he also ranked top five in WRC+, and OPS, and other redundant counting stats like that. I mean, just awesome in the second half. His Statcast numbers for the whole season just feature a ton of red.
He's gonna benefit hitting-- Now, here we get into the fantasy part. He's gonna benefit hitting in the middle of Boston's lineup, and Fenway is baseball's best park for left-handed batters. He's just gonna go much higher in 2025 fantasy drafts.
He doesn't get you the steals we talked about, but this one just seems so obvious to me. He's, like, my number-one breakout candidate, and still available deeper into drafts. He's gonna go, like I said, way higher next year, I can guarantee it.
JAKE MINTZ: And the other thing with him, I think, that's important is, if he struggles, the Red Sox are going to continue to play him, because the best version of the Red Sox in 2024, and 2025, and beyond needs Triston Casas to be good. And so there's a long leash there, whereas, like, you know, I think it's understandable to see Casas and have, like, Bobby Dalbec trauma, in a way.
But Casas, the consensus is he is a level more talented, and dependable, and has accomplished more than what Dalbec did at a similar point in his career.
JORDAN SHUSTERMAN: Yeah, the thing I'd add about him, and I just saw it, he's, first of all, a very interesting personality and someone I'm excited for just the baseball world to get to know more. But when you talk about the statistics, and this is where the fantasy component comes in, but when he talks about hitting and what his goals are, he throws out things like, I want to hit .300, . 400, .500, right?
He's talked about how much Joey Votto is someone he's completely modeled his game after. And in terms of an overall offensive approach, this is something where, oh, this is a complete, complete, complete hitter. And that's been true since he was in high school, right? And now he was much more celebrated coming out of high school, you know, than Votto was 20 years ago.
But you can see that is the offensive profile that is starting to form, and I agree. I think that, listen, there's a lot of reasons to be concerned about the direction of the Red Sox and how much fun they're gonna be having this year. Triston Casas should be the least of your worries, because I think he is going to be fantastic.
So, I think we are totally on board with that, and I agree. It's almost like it feels like some players just develop, kind of get stuck with the stink of the organization, and I feel like that sometimes even applies in a fantasy context, even if, logically, it's like, what the hell, this guy was one of the best hitters in baseball, you know, in the second half, and why wouldn't you want to pick him? So, I love that pick.