Triston Casas lone Red Sox prospect on Baseball Prospectus top 101

At the start of the week, we got our first national top prospect list with Baseball America dropping their top 100 list on Monday. Somewhat surprisingly, the Red Sox ended up with three names on that list, including one in the top 50. It still certainly wasn’t the mark of a great farm system, of course, but it was a step in the right direction and a good start for a prospect season that will see a flurry of these lists over the next month or so.

That flurry will include Baseball Prospectus, who was the next organization to put their list out. Their top 101 list came out Thursday morning, and it wasn’t quite as high on the Red Sox farm system. Their list only had one Red Sox member on the top 101, with both Jeter Downs and Bobby Dalbec being left off after making BA’s list.

That just leaves Triston Casas, who you’ll see from that big ol’ picture and headline at the top of the page was the only player to make this list. And after making the top 50 on the aforementioned Baseball America list, Casas fell quite a bit here. Ultimately he comes in at number 85 on BP’s list, sandwiched between Mets catcher Francisco Alvarez and Angels pitcher Reid Detmers. I would also mention it’s worth reading this from the BP Prospect Team about their evaluations as a whole this year, obviously coming off a strange 2020 with no minor-league season.

The drop off from BA isn’t a huge surprise as Baseball Prospects has seemed down on the Red Sox farm relative to other publications for a few years now, which to be clear is not a criticism. I think the prospect world has long been missing some lack of consensus, it’s just that here it seems the Red Sox are on the short end of the stick. I probably wouldn’t agree with Downs not being on this list, as I think he and Casas are of similar enough value that it’s hard to have one without the other. That said, Casas is close enough to the bottom of this list that I would imagine Downs would be there if the list were extended by a small bit.

For what it’s worth, in their writeup of top Red Sox prospects they said this of Casas’s offensive potential:

“As a first-round prep first baseman, you’d expect Casas to have a big offensive projection. He does. The hit tool isn’t quite as good as the elite cold-corner prospects, but Casas generates a lot of pop without a lot of length and approach improvements could get the hit tool to above-average.”

Typically BP follows this list up with a “just missed” list, and I suspect we’ll at least see Downs on that list. We’ll update this post when that part comes out.