Red Sox: Three prior mistakes Alex Cora must adjust before Opening Day

Red Sox Mistake #1: Starting Pitching

At the beginning of spring, the skipper gave his pitchers a delay for them to start workouts and once they did begin, he didn’t really ramp up the intensity to allow them to recover from 2018. That sounds all well and good but as we saw throughout 2019, that lack of a true training camp that year caused several of the pitchers to rack up injury time, have sluggish and downright miserable starts, and overall look poor compared to their previous campaigns.

The starters just didn’t have the stamina built up due to the extended layoff and couldn’t go deep into games for much of the season. Then we’d see the offense and bullpen have to carry the load far too early in games, it was miserable. As I mentioned above, injuries would also be an issue as we’d see everything from blisters, to calves, to shoulders and elbows all flare up for the starters.

I will give Alex credit in this department as he’s already got his arms throwing and putting in the work just days into spring training. I think if he’s learned from any of his previous mistakes it’ll be this one long before any others. He saw how bad his pitching was in 2019 and the even worse efforts in 2020, he knows his hurlers need to be firing on all cylinders by Opening Day and I doubt he’ll waste the time.