The Boston Red Sox entered 2026 with championship aspirations, but it turns out they're not a very good baseball team. Is it still early in the season? Sure. But Boston — with a 10-17 record entering Sunday — is already running out of time to turn this thing around, or, at the bare minimum, show some signs of life that they can. That much was made clear when Alex Cora and three others on his staff were fired Saturday evening.
Cora, who has watched his club lose four straight and six of seven before Saturday, had been in the eye of the hurricane. He also watched Brayan Bello get absolutely shelled on Friday night, allowing five homers (!) in 3 1/3 innings to the Baltimore Orioles. Following Boston's 10-3 loss, Cora subtly pulled out the ol' youth card to excuse all of the losing.
"We got a bunch of kids that are learning the game, it's my job to keep teaching them the game."
— Tyler Milliken (@tylermilliken_) April 25, 2026
Just not what you're supposed to hear from a team with World Series aspirations. Sounds a lot more like 2023-2024. pic.twitter.com/2qqloGHRfA
As much as Red Sox fans supported Cora, these comments did not fly. Unacceptable. Cannot be said when it's a group of adult men playing a game.
If it's not Alex Cora's fault that the Red Sox stink, whose fault is it?
Earlier this week, it seemed Cora was doing his best to avoid being labeled a scapegoat for Boston's yucky start to 2026. Plenty of fans are pointing the finger at Cora, but he didn't feel that his job was in danger. Cora haughtily told WEEI on Thursday that he's not concerned with any hot seat talk and is "very confident" in the job that he's doing right now.
Sounds like some serious, delusional overcompensating. But wait ... was Cora actually onto something? In a hot-seat-themed article this past week, The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal shot down the notion that Cora will get fired in the middle of the season. "An early move with Alex Cora, who is in the second year of a three-year, $21.75 million contract, seems unlikely," Rosenthal asserted.
That had everyone thinking Craig Breslow was going to shoulder much of the blame ... but Breslow and the higher-ups seemingly acted swiftly this weekend.
Craig Breslow shouldn't sleeping well at night, however ... and for good reason
So far, Breslow's offseason looks even worse than it did when he botched the Alex Bregman situation back in January. It's not just that Breslow's individual acquisitions haven't produced (Caleb Durbin's been bad, but Willson Contreras has been good); it's that Breslow's entire team-building philosophy was unwise. Breslow thought he could construct a successful Red Sox team around starting pitching and run prevention, neglecting to prioritize additions on offense. This wasn't smart.
The obvious problem with that plan is that the Red Sox play 81 games per year at hitter-friendly Fenway Park. To win at Fenway, you need a powerful offense, or at least one that's more powerful than your opponent. Pitching is still important, of course, but there's a reason all of the great Red Sox teams of the past quarter-century have featured significant slug and above-average batting lineups.
Breslow's run prevention blueprint might work somewhere else, but not at Fenway. Furthermore, his belief that Boston could win in the highly competitive AL East with a bunch of young, inexperienced bats ... is looking very shaky at the moment.
Which leads us back to Cora, whose commentary on Boston's youth was definitely felt like a lightly-veiled dig at Breslow and the front office. Cora's job is to win in one of the best divisions in the sport, but he was given a roster of unproven winners. Maybe he didn't deserve to be the scapegoat.
For the Red Sox to get back on track, they need to start mashing; it's as simple as that. The manager can't get out there and hit, and Cora's own philosophy about staying the course obviously doesn't matter if the course itself is doomed by inadequate personnel.
Could he have done a better job of maximizing Boston's talent? Yes. But at the end of the day, there's probably not enough offensive talent on this roster to challenge a club like the New York Yankees. The season felt doomed from the start, and Cora was an early casualty. Will John Henry step in to deliver another blow?
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