Sean McAdam: Red Sox’ Alex Cora went from first-year winner to survivor; Eventually, though, time ran out for him

2026-04-26 · Yahoo Sports

As a dugout rookie in 2018, Alex Cora led the Red Sox to a franchise record 108 wins and a World Series triumph, quickly earning him a reputation as one of the best managers in the game.

Not even a cheating scandal that predated his time in Boston but wasn’t made public until after his second season with the Red Sox, could fully dim his star. The Red Sox re-hired him after he served a one-year suspension from Major League Baseball and only 20 months ago, they made him one of the highest-paid managers in the history of the game with a three-year contract extension.

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But after 2018, Cora had limited success in leading his team to postseason glory. The Sox missed the postseason in 2019, 2022, 2023 and 2024 and even when they snapped a four-year playoff drought last October, lasted only three games in the wild-card round.

In that sense, he was a victim of the impossibly high standard he set in his first season.

Cora, along with much of his coaching staff, was fired Saturday evening, hours after his club snapped a four-game losing streak with a 17-1 win over the Baltimore Orioles. But in the estimation of chief baseball officer Craig Breslow, team president Sam Kennedy and ownership, that wasn’t enough to erase the stink of a 10-17 start to the season, one which began almost exactly a month ago with high expectations.

He leaves as the third-winningest manager in team history with 620 victories, behind only Joe Cronin (1,071) and Terry Francona (744). But with just two playoff series wins since 2018 — including a one-game wild card playoff — Cora never came close to the success he enjoyed at the start.

One of Cora’s skills off the field was his ability to manage up well. He survived while president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski was fired 11 months after the 2018 World Series and he remained with the team when chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom was also dismissed with the Sox en route to a second straight last-place finish.

Cora and Bloom frequently clashed when it came to roster makeup, with Cora urging a more aggressive approach in consecutive trade deadlines while Bloom, perhaps under some restraints imposed from above, took a more cautious approach.

Bloom’s replacement, Craig Breslow, inherited Cora, but chose to extend Cora with a three-year, $21.75 million extension in August of 2024 that runs through the end of 2027. That Cora was not only retained by Breslow, but also given a lucrative multi-year deal, seemed to offer further evidence of his ability to survive any situation.

Every time a shakeup hit the organization, which has gone through four heads of baseball operations in the last 11 years, Cora managed to remain in place. After Bloom was fired in September of 2023, Cora even publicly mused about a desire to move into the front office himself.

But in the end, Cora became the scapegoat for a 2026 season that veered off the tracks early. Even with Saturday’s win, the Red Sox were tied with Houston for the second-worst record in the American League and ranked at or near the bottom in virtually every hitting and pitching category.

Upper management determined it could wait no longer.

It’s worth noting that Cora always seemed to do better with more established players on his roster. The 2018 team had homegrown stars just coming into their own like Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts, yes, but also, was buffeted by veterans like J.D. Martinez and Mitch Moreland, and a veteran pitching staff led by established starters like David Price, Rick Porcello and Chris Sale.

More recently, Cora was charged with winning at the big league level while simultaneously overseeing the development of top young players like Roman Anthony, Marcelo Mayer and Wilyer Abreu. When several underachieved this season, leading to the poor team-wide start, Cora was held responsible.

It could well be that having Dombrowski as his first boss in Boston set an unrealistic precedent. An old school executive, Dombrowski made it his job to act on his manager’s wishes. That type of dynamic seldom exists in the modern game, with younger executives exerting more influence, asking for less feedback from their managers.

In the end, it may be no more complicated than this: The Red Sox, as an organization, have been, with few exceptions, in turmoil over the last decade, shifting lead baseball executives and philosophies on an almost annual basis.

Having seen that didn’t produce the desired results on the field and in the standings, they chose a more conventional route for a losing team: blame and fire the manager.

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