Boston Red Sox fans are looking to pinpoint the exact moment that the organization decided to can Alex Cora. Now we may have an answer. Cora made some bizarre comments after the Red Sox's 10-1 defeat at the hands of the Baltimore Orioles on Friday.
The decision was clearly one that was percolating for a while, as Boston has gotten off to a miserable start. With that said, a tenured manager like Cora who has a history of success with this very organization shouldn't be dismissed lightly.
There would have to be some sort of incompatibility with the vision moving forward, which isn't out of the question given how Craig Breslow has carried himself ever since taking over for Chaim Bloom.
Reacting to the loss, Cora gave the usual breakdown of what went wrong, but at the end, he said, "We got a bunch of kids that are learning the game, it's my job to keep teaching them the game."
That had to have raised some eyebrows. This is a team that raided the St. Louis Cardinals' veteran cupboard over the offseason, bringing in 34-year-old Willson Contreras and 36-year-old Sonny Gray, in addition to having 30-year-old Ranger Suarez as the team's big-ticket free-agent signing.
Like all teams, there are some young players on the Red Sox roster, but the core is players who are entering their prime, and most of the supporting cast is in the 30-plus club. Cora's comments made it sound like he was stuck at the beginning of the Craig Breslow era when the club was retooling a flawed and aging roster, and not as if he were the skipper of a unit that had come out the other side with a World Series ring in their eyes.
Alex Cora's bizarre postgame comments highlight he and Red Sox front office were disconnected
Moving on from Cora was a Sam Kennedy and Craig Breslow decision, and they could soon find out their seats (especially Breslow's) are start heating up, too. Firing Cora feels more like a self-preservation move than anything else.
Cora's statement didn't seem to make much sense, but reading between the lines he didn't seem to think that this was a championship-caliber roster, and if he were able to convince John Henry that it was the architect who was truly at fault, Breslow might have been the one ousted first.
Whether or not that was what was truly on Cora's mind is something we may never know. What does seem likely is that Cora didn't see this coming. To a degree, that's understandable, given how much he's accomplished in Boston and how we are only 27 games into the season.
Ultimately, it seems that there was some sort of difference in vision between Cora and the organization. It's hard to believe that the veteran skipper didn't know the expectation was a deep playoff run at minimum, despite his comments suggesting this was something of a young, developing roster.
It's unlikely we ever know the full story, but the broad strokes here are that this is a failing club with likely divided opinions among leadership. A scapegoat was needed, and Cora was the easy fall guy. But he won't be the last if the Red Sox can't quickly turn it around in 2026.
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