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Since being hired before the 2018 season, Alex Cora has led the Boston Red Sox as manager, excluding his suspension during the 2020 season, but now it may be time for a different voice. Everyone remembers Cora positively for how 2018 ended with the greatest Red Sox team of all time winning the World Series; unfortunately, things have not been as positive since.
2019 saw the Red Sox under Cora attempt to repeat, but it’s never easy, and the team struggled with injuries and inconsistencies. The team saw injuries to the rotation as Chris Sale, David Price, and Nathan Eovaldi pitched in 25 or fewer games, with Eovaldi bouncing between the rotation and bullpen. Offensively, the team received only six games out of Dustin Pedroia, 29 games from Steve Pearce, and 91 games from Mitch Moreland. And yet they still had career years from Christian Vázquez, Xander Bogaerts, Rafael Devers, Eduardo Rodríguez, and Brandon Workman. There were great seasons from Mookie Betts and J.D. Martinez, while also getting a quality rookie season from Michael Chavis.
And still, the team only won 84 games that season.
2020 was a lost season. Cora was suspended and fired before the season even began due to the 2017 Astros’ cheating scandal. Then, the season was shortened due to COVID-19, limiting it to 60 games plus an expanded playoff. The Sox would stumble through that season before Chaim Bloom rehired Cora in 2021.
Cora seemed to turn the team around, leading a team that had no reason to be only two games away from the World Series. The roster differed from his 2018 championship team as Betts, Andrew Benintendi, Moreland, Price, and Jackie Bradley Jr. were all gone. Chris Sale was returning from Tommy John surgery and made nine starts for the team. And yet Cora managed to keep the team over-performing as they were in contention for the division until the last few weeks of the season. They got into the playoffs as a wild card team and knocked the Yankees out of the playoffs in the Wild Card Game before taking the Tampa Bay Rays out in the Division Series. Eventually, their magic ran out, and they lost in six games during the Championship Series to the Houston Astros.
Since then, the team has struggled. The Red Sox under Cora have not been above .500 since 2021, the closest being when they went 81-81 in 2024.
The usual complaints were that the Red Sox dealt with injuries and didn’t have the depth or the players to make a playoff run. There was no debate as the pitching failed to hold up in 2022 and 2023, as both seasons ended with the same record of 78-84. However, the story couldn’t be different. In 2022, the Red Sox had 52 wins heading into the trade deadline and were indecisive on what to do. They sold off Vázquez to the Houston Astros, getting back two prospects in Wilyer Abreu and Enmanuel Valdez. They also brought in Eric Hosmer, Reese McGuire, and Tommy Pham to try and strengthen the team for a playoff run.
They collapsed down the season, winning only 27 games across August, September, and October as the pitching failed to hold up.
2023 was much of the same. Gone was veteran Bogaerts, who Red Sox ownership let sign with San Diego for an 11-year, $280 million contract. He was replaced at shortstop by Kiké Hernández, who was awful defensively. Things were still a struggle on the pitching side as not a single starter had an ERA under 4.00. And despite that, the Red Sox were still in contention. With 56 wins entering the trade deadline, the Red Sox were only 2 ½ games out of a playoff spot and, unlike previous seasons, had a farm system with prospects that could either help at the major league level or be packaged in a trade.
Cora made it known which way he wanted the team to head in as he said to MassLive’s Chris Cotillo, “We’re in a good place. But at the end of the day, the place that we would like to play is in October. It’s not about how many prospects you have or where your farm system is. It might be No. 1 or 30th or whatever. The one that counts is how many games you win in October and how many games you play in October. That’s what we’re shooting for.”
At the time, Cora had every right to say that, especially as his team was fighting for a playoff spot after missing the postseason the prior season. They needed help, and they wanted it. They wanted the organization to say they believed the 2023 team could make the playoffs and compete for the World Series. Instead, Bloom failed to address the issues on the team, mostly surrounding the pitching, and the Red Sox collapsed down the stretch once more, winning only 22 games from August 1st until the end of the season.
Bloom would be relieved of his position before the end of the season, and a report from The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal didn’t come as a surprise when he wrote that “on the surface, the two seemed to co-exist professionally. But friends of Bloom, who spoke on condition of anonymity in exchange for their candor, believe Cora was not as supportive of Bloom as he could have been”. It isn’t a surprise that Cora wanted to win, and while Bloom did too, he didn’t make the moves Cora wanted to improve the roster. Instead, he wanted to build it up from within and support the next core with free agent signings.
Bloom would not see his vision through, and Craig Breslow was hired as the President of Baseball Operations for the Boston Red Sox. While Breslow made moves by replacing Dave Bush as pitching coach with Andrew Bailey, 2024 turned into more of the same.
While the team finished with an 81-81 record, the second-half collapse was the same as the past three seasons. At the end of July, the team had 57 wins, yet they finished down the stretch poorly, only winning 24 games, as once again the pitching collapsed. Unlike Bloom, Breslow did make moves. He brought in James Paxton, Luis Garcia, and Lucas Sims to try and bolster the pitching staff while also trading for Danny Jansen to be the backup catcher.
After missing the playoffs for three straight seasons, the team finally got aggressive in the offseason. They traded for Garrett Crochet and signed Aroldis Chapman, Alex Bregman, and Walker Buehler. They got the big names they hadn’t signed in previous years, and now the roster was ready to compete.
And yet on May 25th, the Red Sox now sit 27-28 after splitting a four-game series with the 18-34 Baltimore Orioles. In a 10-game homestand against the Atlanta Braves, New York Mets, and Baltimore Orioles, the team only went 5-5, and something has to give.
While the team has dealt with injuries, this consistent inconsistency has been a staple of the 2025 season and even longer, dating back to 2022. The pitching fails to go deep into games, the bullpen is overtaxed and mismanaged at times, and the offense can completely vanish at times when needed. In this homestand alone, the Red Sox scored two or fewer runs in five games. In May, they’ve scored two or fewer runs in nine games so far.
And the one constant since 2022 is the manager, Alex Cora. I’m not calling for him to be fired, but you must start discussing it. The Red Sox have not played very well, and many of their mistakes (fielding, baserunning, starters failing to go deep into games) fall on the coaching staff. The team has changed its pitching coach and defense coaches, yet the same mistakes are happening. It’s a sign of the culture within the team, one that the manager sets. One thing that Cora cannot change is that it might be time for a change in managers.
Cora can be a skilled manager; there’s no debating that. Sometimes he’s shown it by getting the most out of his players and winning games he had no business winning. But then there are times when you can’t help but question what he’s doing by pulling a pitcher early or handling the bullpen poorly in different situations. A key example being when he brought Sean Newcomb, a guy who pitches when the Sox are up or down by a lot, into a close game with runners on the corners. Or having exhausted his bullpen so much that he needs to rely on Brennan Bernardino and Luis Guerrero for high-leverage innings. But ever since winning the World Series in 2018, he’s had numbers that would have fired other managers. A manager who has better numbers than he did gets fired.
Let’s look at Cora’s numbers since they won in 2018. Since that season, Cora has a .509 winning percentage, one postseason appearance, two last-place finishes, and three losing seasons. John Farrell's predecessor also won it in his first season in Boston in 2013. After that, he managed four more seasons before being replaced by Cora after 2017. In those four seasons, Farrell had a .517 winning percentage, two division titles, two last-place finishes, and three losing seasons.
If that could get Farrell fired, why hasn’t there been a discussion about Cora being on the hot seat? There is too much talent on this team for them to struggle this consistently through not just 2025 but since 2022. The Red Sox have had three different people run the baseball operations under Cora, with Dave Dombrowski and Bloom being seen as the problems. Should the team keep losing, will Breslow be viewed as the issue? Coaching-wise, Cora has had three bench coaches, two third base coaches, five first base coaches, two hitting coaches, and three pitching coaches, which shows that the team will replace the coaches around Cora should they fail to produce the desired results.
On the defensive side, José David Flores and Kyle Hudson handle the infield and outfield defense, respectively, the former taking over for Andy Fox, who had been in that position since 2022. Pitching-wise, the team viewed a need to change it up and bring in Bailey, who had done a magnificent job with San Francisco’s pitchers. That hasn’t been replicated in Boston.
So, who’s to blame this time around? They got Cora the players he wanted, and last year, they changed the coaching staff. Now, the team is still mediocre. Something has to give; either the team starts winning, or John Henry and Breslow must start discussing what to do with Cora and his staff. The Red Sox have too much talent in their organization to let this continue.
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