Abreu's 3-hit game cements series sweep but Casas' injury looms large for Sox

Forget poets. The Red Sox are the ‘Tortured Players Department.’

How many more hits can the roster take? They’ve already sustained so many sustained blows that it’s shocking to look at the calendar and realize it’s April, not August.

“I’m in a lot of pain right now,” a crestfallen Triston Casas told reporters before the Red Sox won Sunday’s series finale 6-1 for a sweep in Pittsburgh.

The Red Sox placed their first baseman on the 10-day injured list with a rib strain hours before, and both he and Alex Cora admitted they were worried the absence would be a lengthy one. In his stead, the Red Sox called up catcher Tyler Heineman, the last healthy position player on the 40-man roster, for their last game against the Pirates.

Again, April. Not August.

Trevor Story, Lucas Giolito, and Chris Murphy are out for the season; the two pitchers were done before Opening Day. Rafael Devers has missed 10 of the team’s first 23 games due to a combination of shoulder and knee issues. He and Tyler O’Neill collided in the outfield on Marathon Monday, landing the outfielder on the 7-day injured list with a concussion. Romy Gonzalez was called up from Triple-A to fill part of the gaping hole left by Story, only to go on the 10-day IL himself with a wrist sprain. Nick Pivetta (mild right-elbow flexor strain), Garrett Whitlock (left-oblique strain), and Isaiah Campbell (right shoulder impingement) are on the 15-day IL.

And now Casas.

“Obviously it’s hard for us to have those guys out, but we stay together as a team, we stay together as a unit,” Wilyer Abreu told NESN’s Jahmai Webster (via Carlos Villoria Benitez).

It makes the 13-10 record all the more impressive, though sweeping the Oakland A’s and Pittsburgh Pirates isn’t exactly write-home-about material. (When the Pirates swept the Sox at Fenway in early April ‘23, it was their first-ever series victory against the Sox on their home field.)

Injuries are running rampant around the league, so it’s not like the Red Sox are alone in their suffering. Reinforcements are on their way, too. Devers asked Cora to put him in Sunday’s lineup, but the manager wanted to give his third baseman another day to rest his bone-bruised knee. He and O’Neill are on track to return to the lineup for Tuesday’s series opener in Cleveland. Vaughn Grissom had the Triple-A lineup’s only two hits on Saturday evening. The energetic second baseman – who was sidelined throughout the entire slate of spring training games with a groin strain – also stole a base and played second for the entire second game of the WooSox’s doubleheader.

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