Can Trevor Story and Triston Casas Be Counted On in 2025?

After dropping a four-game series in New York and a three-game series in Tampa, the Red Sox find themselves on the outside looking in, with fewer and fewer opportunities to qualify for the postseason. Still, this season should be considered a success. The team has hung around the playoff picture for longer than it did in previous years, and it did so with a patchwork starting rotation, a bullpen that punched above its weight for part of the season, and two cornerstone infielders spending the vast majority of on their time on the injured list. Let’s give Craig Breslow, Alex Cora, his staff, and even Chaim Bloom some credit. They took what many expected to be a lost season and turned it into a campaign full of fun games and meaningful September baseball.

Speaking of those cornerstone infielders, it's fair to wonder what the season would have been like had Trevor Story and Triston Casas not gone down early in the year. Story injured his non-throwing shoulder on April 5 in what was described at the time as a season-ending injury. His return to the lineup on September 7 was viewed as a veteran-leader move. A left rib strain put Casas on the shelf from April 21 until August 16. While much has been made of his mental practice swings and weapon-based pain scale, the loss of a powerful left-handed bat was a big one. Rafael Devers became the team's primary power threat, with no protection behind him in the lineup.

Both players have returned with varying degrees of success. They are making the plays you expect them to make at their positions, but their offense still hasn't gotten healthy. Story has been just a hair below average, but Casas is running a 91 wRC+ since his return, a far cry from the 129 he put up last season. I started wondering what the 2025 season could hold for Story and Casas. Both are expected to play huge roles in Boston for the foreseeable future, even if a certain author believes Story makes more sense as a sell-low trade chip. Can their brief returns to the lineup can tell us anything as we look to next season?

Story’s lack of offense is nothing new to the Red Sox faithful. Since his return, he's batting .258 with a 98 wRC+, which makes for roughly league-average production. He’s recently found a slight power surge, though one of the homers got some help from Yankee Stadium's short porch. Still, the eye test shows a hitter who is making more soft contact than hard. He has an 85.1-mph average exit velocity and a 24.5% hard-hit rate this season, and the EV figure is even lower since his return from injury. Both of those numbers are catastrophically low, by far the worst of Story's career. His spray chart reveals very few balls hit deep into the outfield.

For a second straight season, the hope is that a full offseason of workouts will get Story back in All-Star form with the bat. Sure, it’s an incredibly small sample size but the 82.6-mph average exit velocity he's run since his return — the fourth-lowest among all qualified players over that stretch — leaves you with a sense of longing rather than hope. The flip side is his glove still plays. He makes both the routine and flashy plays look easy, and that’s exactly what you want your shortstop to do. It’s no secret that shortstop has been a point of contention among Boston fans since the team signed Story and Xander Bogaerts departed for San Diego a year later. Story’s inability to stay on the field has shined a new light on just how valuable even a league-average shortstop is to a team with postseason aspirations. There has been a noticeable shift when he's been on the dirt, as his attitude and leadership have settled and calmed the infield. You know that if a ball is rocketed to short, Story will field it smoothly and make the play. His teammates don’t have to worry about whether a last-minute hop will squirt past him or that he'll airmail the throw to first. The sample of 19 games is tiny, but according to both DRS and Statcast's Feilding Run Values, he's already saved two runs, an elite pace. You can’t say that about anyone else who has played up the middle in Boston this season. There’s no reason to expect his defense to take a considerable step backward next season. I still maintain he should be traded due to the influx of youth, but you can count on him to be the Opening Day shortstop who hits .250 at best but plays borderline Gold Glove defense.

Pivoting to Triston Casas, our sample size isn’t huge, but it's bigger than Story’s. In the 23 games before his injury, Casas was running a 128 wRC+, and a 30.1% strikeout rate, essentially the same production he put up last year, but with more strikeouts. In the 31 games since his return, his wRC+ has fallen nearly 30 points to 91, and his strikeout rate has climbed to a precipitous 36.7%, fifth-highest among all qualified players over that period. Alex Cora has even taken to sitting Casas against lefty starters for the last two weeks, in favor of Connor Wong. Before the injury, Casas ran a 149 wRC+ against lefties and a 128 wRC+ against righties. Since his return, those numbers are 44 and 105. He deserves some time to figure things out, and he was probably rushed back a bit to help with the playoff hunt, but it’s becoming clearer that Casas isn’t going to return to form on offense this season. He’s hit three home runs since returning from injury, but his spray chart isn't pretty.

On the other hand, Casas has looked like he’s taken a step forward on defense. He looks more comfortable, and he's picking balls you wouldn't have expected him to pick at the start of the season, though he has committed two errors since his return. Casas has always been a passable defender, but he looks like he’s coming into his own at first. There’s no reason to expect that Casas won't return to form on offense next year. He should step into the All-Star potential he’s shown when completely healthy.

The question of what to expect from Story and Casas is one of many that faces the Red Sox this offseason. Will they find a way to acquire a true ace? What does the bullpen look like after the departures of Chris Martin and Kenley Jansen? How do they resolve the outfield logjam? We won't get any answers until November at the earliest. However, Story and Casas will be looked at as leaders of the infield every time they are in the lineup. Let’s just hope they're out there for longer next season. Maybe that’s the push this team needs to break back into the playoff scene.