When the Red Sox named Ceddanne Rafaela to the Opening Day roster, they understood the rookie would endure some growing pains.

While regarded as a fabulous fielder at multiple premium positions, Rafaela’s offensive approach needed refining. Throughout his professional career the 23-year-old has shown a propensity to chase pitches out of the zone, and so far that tendency has borne itself out in the majors. Entering Saturday Rafaela was batting .215 with a .245 on-base percentage, and his 27.1% strikeout rate and 3.6% walk rate were both far worse than league average.

But with a young player like Rafaela, what’s more important is whether or not there’s improvement over time, even if it’s not reflected in the numbers. Asked if they’ve seen progress from Rafaela at the plate, Red Sox manager Alex Cora said Rafaela’s work is beginning to pay off.

“You start looking at numbers and he’s starting to get his hits,” Cora said. “I think he put great at bats against Chris (Sale) in Atlanta, yesterday the walk was huge and he’s getting there, little by little. I do believe there’s more but we have to be patient.”

Cora compared Rafaela’s development to Triston Casas, who came to the majors with a much more advanced plate approach but who still struggled to start his first full big league season last spring. Casas was batting .188 with a 25.5% strikeout rate at this point last year, but he wound up taking off in the second half and established himself as one of the most impactful hitters in baseball.

“If you compare Casas’ numbers against Rafaela’s, he had a better first month than Casas last year, the only thing is pitch selection and walks,” Cora said. “We knew about the process with Triston and that it was going to pay off with time.”

Rafaela still has a long way to go, but he’s starting to see better results. Over his past 11 games entering Saturday Rafaela was batting .350 with a .957 OPS, including two home runs, four doubles and 10 RBI. He’s been one of the few bright spots amid what has otherwise been a brutal team-wide offensive slump.

Rafaela and Casas are obviously much different players. Rafaela’s biggest problem is he swings at almost everything, and when Casas struggled his problem was he wasn’t swinging at enough. That aggressiveness has often been an asset for Rafaela, and the key for the Red Sox is teaching him to better pick his spots so that he can do damage on pitches in the zone without constantly getting baited outside.

“We don’t want to take the aggression away from him but at the same time we want him to swing at the right ones, if he does that he’s going to be good,” Cora said. “I think he’s starting to learn too that it’s not the ‘A’ swing all the time, sometimes you have to make sure you make contact and he can stay on pitches, and if you do that then good things happen. So far, little by little, you can see a different hitter compared to earlier in the season.”