The Boston Red Sox have not had the season they had hoped for after adding Garrett Crochet and Alex Bregman. Could a manager change be coming?
One American League East team has already fired its manager after underachieving in 2025, the Baltimore Orioles. Alex Cora has made the postseason twice in his seven seasons as the Red Sox manager and won the World Series in his first season as the team's manager. This season, the Red Sox are 39-37 entering play on Thursday and are 4 1/2 games back of the division lead.
Cora still has a chance to get his team playing good baseball again and potentially make the postseason. However, after spending big on Crochet and an array of young talent, the Red Sox likely expect to be more than a wild card team. FanSided's John Buhler ranked the next managers to potentially be fired, and had Cora as the top candidate.
"The Boston Red Sox need to rip the band-aid off that is manager Alex Cora," wrote Buhler. "I understand that he won a World Series here in 2018, but that was seven years ago. In the years since, he has been tied to the Houston Astros' sign-stealing scandal and been ousted for a year, only to come back in 2021. Yes, the 2021 team did make it to the ALCS, but the last four seasons have been varying shades of rubbish."
"He seems like a manager who stumbles into luck every so often," Buhler continued. "From afar, I do not think he does a great job of managing a clubhouse, nor do I think he does a great job of empowering his younger players to make a difference. There may not be a manager in baseball who has less of a finger on the pulse of the team he is managing than Cora. I would be utterly stunned if he got to manage Boston next season."
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Cora has a 276-286 record since the start of 2022, entering play on Thursday. He did bring a championship to Boston, but after this season, there may be a reason for the Red Sox to move on. Although the Rafael Devers situation was more the front office's fault, Cora did not seem to do much to make the franchise's highest-paid player commit to what the team was trying to achieve.
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