It’s been nearly two years since Alex Cora joined the Red Sox and though he started off doing fairly well, especially during the 2018 season, where he narrowly missed winning the Manager of the Year Award, 2019, however, has been a little more difficult, so, two years on we’re asking what influence Alex Cora has made on the Red Sox, has he made a successful manager so far? We enlisted help from sports expert and fellow Puerto Rican, Samuel Sanchez from monederosmart.com to see how well Cora has actually done.
The 2018 Season
2018 was a solid year for the Red Sox, Cora was the first manager from Puerto Rico to ever take a team to the World Series.
“Though there are many Latino players in MLB teams, almost a third, the same can’t be said for managers who are incredibly underrepresented in the sport by Latinos” states Sanchez, “This is what made Cora’s successes of 2018 even more notable.”
Not only this, he really did check all the boxes when you think about what it takes to manage a team. We’re talking about motivation behind the scenes, the implementation of new plays and tactics, assessing (in-game) what’s working and what’s not and making appropriate adjustments and, of course, keeping up team morale. His communication with the team was stellar and he shows incredible empathy, not just to the team he manages, but to everyone around him.
The 2019 Season
This year, however, the Sox haven’t had as good a run, they’re in a bit of a slump, with one of the latest losses seeing Chris Sale ‘flipping out’ at an umpire during their game against the Yankees when they were beat 9-2. Sale is having a particularly bad season with his stats plummeting which can only be adding to the frustration
Having said that, Cora’s optimism still remains. Every team can have a bad season and, at the time of writing, the Red Sox still have 28 games left to play this season. Their latest game against the Colorado Rockies saw them win 7-4 thanks to a rock-solid offense. Nevertheless, the odds still seem pretty long to grab a Wild Card Spot; even if they play great games, they’re relying more on other teams to do poorly.
So what’s with the poor season? Is it something we should be blaming Cora for? Well for one, they didn’t make any kind of upgrades during the recent trade window – financials aside, there were a lot of solid prospects, which we wrote about here.
Conclusion: Has Alex Cora Been a Let Down This Year?
I think he’s trying pretty hard, when you’re in a season slump it can be hard to get out of it, even with Cora’s optimism. Will we see that Wild Card space? Who knows?! Perhaps that recent win is just the thing the team needs to get back on track and mimic some of last year’s successes.
Cora has already announced some switch-ups to the starting rotation during this weekend’s games, with David Price returning from injury which will be interesting to see. As far as managers go, he’s still pulling out the stops to help the Red Sox turn things around this season. Cora’s communication and willingness to adapt to try and grab the Wild Card spot may just get them through. However, still six games behind Oakland, it is still a bit of a push and many feel now like they should cut their losses and start to focus on the 2020 season.
What are your thoughts on Cora and the Red Sox this year?