Red Sox select Triston Casas with their first-round pick

The Red Sox are on a quest to rebuild their farm system, and they’ve gotten started with their first pick of the 2018 MLB draft on Monday night. With that selection, they went with high school first baseman Triston Casas with their first round pick at number 26 overall. He is 18 years old and went to American Heritage High School in Florida. He is also committed to the University of Miami next year.

This bucks their recent trend of taking pitchers in the first round, something they’ve done in each of the last two years. It also goes against some of the recent mocks, though Casas was mentioned as a possibility by a few publications.

We’ll have a lot more on Casas later on tonight, but for now here are the basics. Although he’ll be listed as a 1B/3B, it’s almost certain that he will be a first base only player soon enough, and possibly as soon as this year. The bat has huge potential, though, particularly the power. There are some questions about the hit tool, but the Red Sox clearly believe it is good enough for him to tap into that raw power. Baseball America has him ranked as their number 25 prospect in the draft, while MLB Pipeline has him at 20 and Fangraphs has him at 33.

As I said, we’ll have more in-depth info on the Red Sox’ newest prospect shortly.

Also, special shoutout to Kiley McDaniel of Fangraphs for tipping this pick early.