BOSTON — Triston Casas carefully maneuvered his lumbering 6-foot-4 frame, propped up on crutches, across the Boston Red Sox clubhouse Tuesday afternoon. A heavy brace stabilized his left knee from his thigh to his shin.
Just over a month ago, Casas landed awkwardly on his left foot after running out a groundball and went down immediately, rupturing his left patellar tendon.
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His recovery will be long and arduous with a return to the team targeted by Opening Day 2026.
“I’m living my worst nightmare,” Casas said. “This is the worst-case scenario for any type of player to go through a recovery that’s double digits in months. But going through it now, I feel like I’m going to get better as a consequence of it.”
Casas said he knew immediately something was wrong May 2 when his left leg gave out before he even reached first base. The days immediately after the injury, which included surgery May 4 at Massachusetts General Hospital, were the hardest. He noted the immediate impact of the injury felt like his knee had been hit with a sledgehammer.
“A lot of anger, a lot of frustration,” he said. “I had a lot of goals for myself this year that I’m not going to be able to accomplish. So back to the drawing board. I’ll have a full offseason to recover, get back to the caliber of player I hope on being, and let’s try to attack it next year.”
“Considering everything that’s happened, I’m in a good head space. … I’ve heard different amount of months—I haven’t heard anything over a year, though. As of right now, our goal is Opening Day next year.”
Triston Casas on his road to recovery. pic.twitter.com/VBopuVH4iE
— NESN (@NESN) June 3, 2025
Casas missed 98 games last season with a fractured rib cage that prevented him from swinging with full force. He noted, though, the recovery from this injury will be much more deliberate.
“This is a completely different injury in terms of timeline,” he said. “Last year, I was day to day, every single day ready to go, which was almost in a way more mentally frustrating. Just feeling like I was going to feel good every single day coming to the yard, wanting to swing a bat, wanting to hit, and then it not happening. But at least now I kind of know what I’m getting myself into mentally.
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“I have a timeline. We have checkpoints that we want to get to and stuff. So I think this process is going to be a little more mentally easing than last year. Still physically, though, it’s gonna be the toughest thing that I’ve gone through so far in my career.”
Casas said the prognosis for a full recovery is strong. His surgeon told him that though the injury was severe, it was a best-case scenario with a complete rupture of the patellar tendon rather than a partial tear that sometimes doesn’t heal as thoroughly. The patellar tendon rupture procedure isn’t as common as ACL surgery, which a player can return from in eight to 10 months.
Mets closer Edwin Díaz ruptured a patellar tendon in the 2023 World Baseball Classic and missed the entire 2023 season, returning to the mound in 2024.
Casas said Garrett Richards, a Red Sox teammate in 2021, reached out after his injury. The veteran pitcher suffered a similar one at Fenway Park when he was pitching for the Los Angeles Angels in 2014.
“He’s been a big help to me mentally, walking me through everything that I was going to feel and stuff,” Casas said. “I’m really grateful for him and his messages and kind words to me.”
Casas has long been in tune with his body and taken his workouts seriously, almost to a maniacal level with pre- and postgame workouts and yoga and core work on the field. That made the freak accident even more disheartening.
“I feel like I do a lot to try to prevent something like this,” he said. “And at the same time I did everything that I could to not, so it is frustrating, but I don’t feel like I could have done more. It is what it is.”
Casas will remain on crutches for two more weeks and will continue to gradually put more pressure on the leg. Though the first two months of recovery have him keeping his leg as straight as possible to heal, some of his therapy includes very granular work like shifting weight from leg to leg, hip mobility and calf raises.
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“We’ve been trying to push the envelope, making sure that I don’t lose too much muscle in my quad, but at the same time, making sure that it heals has been the balance we’ve been challenging,” he said.
Casas will have a few more post-operation appointments with his surgeon through the end of June and then plans to head to Fort Myers, Fla., to continue rehab at the team’s JetBlue Park facilities. By then, he’s hoping to be doing some walking and eventually progress to light running on an anti-gravity treadmill that can reduce body weight by about 80 percent as he builds up strength. He plans to spend the offseason continuing rehab at JetBlue Park.
In the early stages of recovery this month, Casas said it’s been hard to watch the sport wanting to play so badly, but he has also wanted to watch games to support his teammates.
“It’s tough, but I still do it,” he said. “If the team is doing well, I want to be out there and having fun, and if things aren’t going our way, then I want to be out there to help.
“I’m still sticking it out. I’m with them every single step of the way. We’re in this together no matter what. They have my back. I’ve been feeling their support.”
(Photo: Brian Fluharty / Getty Images)
