The Boston Red Sox parted ways with manager Alex Cora following a 17-1 win against the Orioles on April 25? Where does he go from here?
Red Sox primary owner John Henry isn’t a very patient man. The Red Sox hadn’t won a World Series since 1918 when Henry’s group took over in 2002. The person who put that group together was the former president and part-owner of the Orioles, the late Larry Lucchino.
There is a divergence of opinion who deserves the credit for the 2004 and 2007 World Series teams, Lucchino or Theo Epstein. (Lucchino put Epstein charge of baseball operations for those teams.) Regardless of who deserves the most credit, clearly Lucchino and Epstein deserve more than their fair share.
From 2002 until his departure in October 2015, Lucchino was the man who kept Henry on the straight and narrow for 14 years. During that tenure, the Red Sox won three World Series in 2004, 2007 and 2013. Ben Cherington, now in charge of the Pittsburgh Pirates, put together the 2013 squad.
Since Lucchino departed, Henry has won one World Series in 2018, and by the looks of it, they aren’t soon to win another. In that time, he has run off managers Terry Francona, John Farrell and Cora and lead baseball executives Chaim Bloom, Dave Dombrowski and Cherington.
As I say, Henry isn’t a patient man. Hey, it’s his team and he is entitled to do with it as he wishes. In moving on from all of those savvy baseball people, he has alienated the Red Sox Nation to the degree that the fans no longer trust Henry to do right.
The litany of things is too long to list here, but suffice it to say that I ran into a group of Red Sox beat writers at the press box elevator the other night after the Orioles had trounced the Sox, 10-3. In all my years covering Orioles-Sox games, I have never seen the group so negative as to what they were watching.
So it didn’t come as a total shock that Cora was dismissed. The timing seemed peculiarly rushed and just smacked of desperation earlier than need be. I am not privy to all that those reporters had been witness to, so maybe there is more than meets the eye here.
As to where the Sox go from here, I imagine, unless the team totally falls apart, they’ll get back to playing well enough that Chad Tracy will manage the team for the remainder of 2026. And if he gets them back on track, I could easily see him as their manager for at least two or three years beyond 2026.
As for Cora, if he wants to manage again right away, he may quickly have a chance to jump back on the horse with a struggling big-market club. I believe the Philadelphia Phillies, Houston Astros and New York Mets could take a quick and hard run at saving their seasons with Cora taking over in the dugout. The Mets seem most likely of those three.
A well-respected manager has been let go by one team only to be quickly picked up by another team in the past. I remember it well. On June 19, 1986, Tony La Russa was fired as manager of the White Sox by owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who was talked into it by then-GM Ken Harrelson during his one year at the helm. (Harrelson and Reinsdorf later admitted it was a huge mistake.)
On July 7, 1986 — roughly three weeks after his firing — La Russa was hired by the Oakland Athletics. He managed the A’s through 1995. La Russa took the A’s to three consecutive World Series in ’88, ’89 and ’90, winning just the ’89 Series against the backdrop of the huge earthquake in the Bay Area.
La Russa, of course, moved on to St. Louis with GM Walt Jocketty, who also left the Athletics. La Russa won two more World Series in St. Louis in 2006 and 2011 on his way to Cooperstown.
So, it’s been done before. My money is on Cora striking a deal with one of these three teams before too long.
Photo Credit: Colin Murphy/PressBox