Boston Red Sox first baseman Triston Casas is rarely one to withhold information, but he's keeping one thing a bit close to the vest.
Casas, who is working his way back from a torn patellar tendon in his left knee, posted a rather cryptic Instagram caption in November, one that had Red Sox fans curious about whether something had deteriorated in his relationship with the team.
"If we’re gonna have any chance at something decent it’s stuff like this that needs to be addressed," Casas wrote. "I’m going to try to be as transparent as possible… within reason. No delusion, just normalizing the tough conversation."
Was Casas upset with the potential of the Red Sox replacing him as the starting first baseman, which they effectively did when they traded for Willson Contreras a month later?
Well, the true intentions may never be uncovered, but according to Casas himself, he was just responding to one particular person, one whose identity the 25-year-old wouldn't disclose.
"All my Instagram captions, I’m talking to one person,” Casas said, per Christopher Smith of MassLive. “That’s just something that I’m thinking that I’m not saying to them, that I put it on the caption. So they don’t even mean anything really relatively to my life. ... I can’t tell you the person, but I can tell you that it’s to a person. They know what the message is. And I think that they just go great with the pictures that I put them with.”
As spring training gets underway, the timeline for Casas to return to action remains somewhat unclear. It's unlikely he'll be on the opening day roster, but the Red Sox also haven't given any indication that he's a candidate for the 60-day injured list. There will probably be some sort of rehab stint/de facto tryout at Triple-A to determine if he's ready to contribute as a designated hitter.
Never one for self-doubt, Casas knows he's facing a "prove it" year. Fans won't care who he's addressing in his social media captions if he gets back to the hitter he was in the second half of 2023, but there are a lot of hurdles to clear to get to that stage.