Boston Red Sox first baseman Triston Casas can't seem to catch a break.
After a standout rookie season in 2023, Casas was only able to appear in 92 games over the last two seasons, and wasn't healthy in time to begin this one. His torn patellar tendon in his left knee, suffered last May, was scheduled to take around 14 months to fully recover from and get back up to game speed.
Early in the spring, Casas seemed to be making good progress by all accounts. He was running the bases, starting sliding drills, and starting to make louder contact against live batting practice on the back fields at the team's spring training complex.
On Wednesday, Tim Healey of The Boston Globe issued a midday update on Casas, and it wasn't a positive one. The 26-year-old is dealing with sore ribs, and his rehab progress from the knee injury appears to be impacted.
According to Healey, manager Alex Cora said that Casas will be "shut down for a while... We have to slow it down."
A rib injury was Casas' undoing in 2024, as he hit the injured list three weeks into the regular season and didn't return for the next four months. That was a torn cartilage issue, and it's unclear at this stage how much that past experience played into the discomfort Casas is now experiencing.
If the original timeline for Casas' return was sometime around June 1, it's now hard to say whether the team should expect him back before the All-Star break. Further information on that front will have to wait, but for now, it's just another bummer of a setback for a player who has had too many of them for someone with his talent level.