Triston Casas falls short of winning the American League Rookie of the Year, finishes in third place
Overall, Triston Casas had a strong first full season in the big leagues, and due to that, he was a finalist for the American League Rookie of the Year award.
Unfortunately, Casas finished third in the voting, falling short of winning the award. Orioles’ Gunnar Henderson was the unanimous winner for the American League, become the fifth player ever to collect all 30 first place votes.
Casas received six second-place votes and seven third-place votes, finishing with 25 total points. Henderson had 150 points with Bibee at 67.
Dustin Pedroia was the last Red Sox player (2007) to win the AL Rookie of the Year Award, outfielder Andrew Benintendi was a finalist back in 2017.
The 23-year-old began the season slow at the plate, struggling to hit for any average, resulting in fans across social media to wonder if he should be in Triple-A to work through his issues at the plate. Instead the Red Sox did the opposite and continued to play him.
Speaking with one Red Sox executive on a condition of anonymity during the regular season, “sometimes you have to let these guys play and develop at the big league level. It’s shit or get off the pot time to see what we have in Casas.”
The young slugger began to figure things ourt from July 1 through the end of the season, Casas had an eye-popping .996 OPS and crushed 15 homers over his final 60 games. He was just hitting .200 prior to his surge at the dish. His season came to an end on Sept. 14 due to a nagging right shoulder injury.
Casas showed the type of elite hitter he could be, which included a monster 1.034 OPS after the All-Star break.
“It’s a credit to the coaching staff and front office for giving me the opportunity to fail and find my groove,” said Casas to the MLB Network recently. “It was only a matter of time. I felt like I was confident in myself and so were they.”
Among AL Rookies with at least 400 at-bats, Casas finished first in OPS (.857), slugging percentage (.490) and on-base percentage (.367) while finishing second in homers (24), second in walks (70) and fourth in RBIs (65).
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