It’s been over two months since Triston Casas went down with a torn cartilage in his left rib cage, but this week an MRI confirmed that the Red Sox first baseman’s injury has fully healed.

Now, Casas can finally begin ramping up for a return.

Casas confirmed the positive update in a pregame scrum with reporters, saying his imaging came back clean and that he’d just finished swinging for the first time since suffering the injury in April.

“I swung for the first time about an hour ago and I feel great,” Casas said, adding that he’s completely pain-free but hasn’t started hitting a ball yet. “I took about 20 (swings) at 75%-ish so we’ll see how I come in tomorrow but today I feel great.”

Though he hasn’t been able to swing until now, Casas has kept busy with other baseball activities, including running, working out, taking ground balls and throwing. Now he will work his way through a hitting progression, which will include hitting off a tee, soft toss, batting practice and hitting off pitching machines before finally facing live arms and playing in rehab games.

Yet while he’s optimistic about his progress, Casas also doesn’t want to look too far ahead.

“We’re going to see how I come in tomorrow because if I come in sore we’ll have to hold off tomorrow,” Casas said. “After I stack up a bunch of days of swinging in a row I’ll be able to get a better idea but hopefully as soon as I feel good I feel like I’ll start to be able to swing a bat pretty fast and that’ll translate to some game-time at bats hopefully in a couple of weeks.”

Casas went on to say that a 2-3 week timetable sounds reasonable, which would put his return right around the All-Star Break. That would push his injury close to three months, but Casas said he doesn’t feel like his recovery has taken longer than expected and even that the days have flown by.

Regardless, he’s excited by how well his teammates have been playing and can’t wait to get back on the field so he can start contributing again.

“Hopefully I can come in and provide a little impact power, hopefully I can provide protection for some of the guys as well and score those guys who have been getting on base,” Casas said. “I’m really happy with how the team is playing and hopefully I can hit the ground running and fit right into the mold and keep contributing to wins, because we’ve been playing great.”

Mind games

During a previous scrum with reporters earlier this month Casas indicated he’d begun taking “dry swings,” which usually refers to practice swings and implies a certain degree of movement. But Casas clarified on Wednesday that the “swings” he’d been taking didn’t involve a bat or any actual movement but were instead entirely a mental and visualization exercise.

This was an all-timer of a back-and-forth with Casas. Here’s the exchange in its entirety. https://t.co/EiMq4cev6u pic.twitter.com/cK98v9ihLh

— Mac Cerullo (@MacCerullo) June 26, 2024

“Just in my mind. Without a bat, just in my head,” Casas said. “I’ve taken thousands of at bats in this time, so I feel great, I feel ready.”

Asked if he was suggesting that he would take these pretend swings while standing around, Casas interjected and said he’d also do it while sitting or lying down, but that there wasn’t any twisting or swing-like motions involved.

“Oh no, no twisting. Yeah, no, I wasn’t able to do that,” Casas said. “But I was able to swing.”