Long time readers of the MMBB know that I like to divy these articles up into three points discussing three things that caught my attention across the previous week. They could be positive trends, concerning developments, or stuff about the Red Sox that I just find amusing and fun. Either way, I like to give the OTM readers a collection of things to discuss.
But, like, what else am I gonna write about this week?
Am I really gonna sit here and try to dive into the plate approach of guys hitting in the bottom
half of the order? Do you really need me to drone on about pitch mixes and why Brayan Bello shouldn’t be throwing his cutter as much anymore? I like doing that analysis, and I hope you folks continue to read it because I enjoy outlining it to you. More typical Brushback articles will be published on a consistent basis in the future.
Alex Cora just got fired, though! That’s the only topic worth diving into today! Normally I’d be looking forward to talking about a series victory after an awful mid-week series, but there are bigger fish to fry here. That’s the only thing I have the bandwidth to talk about right now! Regardless of how you feel about the decision, it’s one that’s so massive that I would hope you’d understand the decision to only focus on that this time around. I’d also hope you’d understand that the rest of the site is going to be flooded with the Cora fallout in the coming days; these things happen when a manager with almost a decade’s worth of experience with a team is cut off in late April after a piss poor start.
As for the specific topic of my musings, though, I do want to focus on President of Baseball Operations Craig Breslow. This is the not the first time the front office has made a decision at this scale, so I think it makes sense to discuss what it could mean for Breslow’s future.
It’s Monday Morning Brushback time, y’all.
Before We Begin…
I want to give a summary of where I think I stand, as I write this early Sunday afternoon before the finale in Baltimore, regarding the Red Sox’s decision to fire manager Alex Cora along with numerous members of his now-former coaching staff. Apologies if these thoughts are a bit scattered, because I’ve got a lot to say before I get into my main point. I wanted to make this a quick snapshot, but if you’ve ever read the MMBB or listened to Pod On Lansdowne before you’d know that brevity is not really in my toolbox.
I was shocked when I heard the news Saturday, and it’s still very surprising now. I thought Cora was made of teflon. I’ve been more of a Cora apologist in years’ past, but perhaps it was time for a change—as our own Bryan Joiner wrote recently.
The 2026 Red Sox have had an unacceptable start as they’ve simply looked unprepared out of the gates. A bad plate approach, some bone-headed decisions, you know how this shit has gone in the first few weeks. And not for nothing: this is not the first time the Sox have had stretches of playing sloppy and—frankly—dumb baseball.
Errors are a funky stat, yes, but Boston has been in the top three in errors per game (so, I guess overall errors too because everyone plays 162 lmao) in each of the previous three seasons; that ain’t a small sample size. I know you’ve noticed how many outs this team has had a tendency of running into in recent years. Entering play Sunday, the Red Sox only had the 17th best OPS with runners in scoring positions (.737; thought it would be worst frankly, though I’d guess that Saturday’s win boosted those stats a bit). They haven’t ranked within the top 10 in MLB in OPS with RISP since 2021. Does that not speak to some approach with the coaching? Have you not lamented the lack of situational hitting from this club in recent times? The platooning within the lineup at times made sense, but didn’t it annoy you to see Wilyer Abreu consistently get benched against lefties prior to this year? A guy who has 30 home run potential, even if he’s cooled off recently? I know my answer to that.
Yet at the same time, I can’t levy every failure at Cora’s feet. He wasn’t the guy ultimately tasked with buying the groceries, to borrow a platitude from Bill Parcells. Craig Breslow was, and still is, that guy. Those groceries have been pretty shit to start this year. The checks are being signed by the FSG brass, but the decisions he’s made in developing this roster haven’t gone swimmingly in 2026. There’s still a huge question mark regarding the outfield logjam, a conundrum he’s been unable to solve for months at this point. Guys can’t consistently get playing time because of that pickle. The infield defense has improved overall (Contreras has been awesome at first, Durbin has gotten way better at third after a shaky start, while Mayer and IKF have rated out as positive defenders thus far. Just don’t look at Trevor Story’s OAA). But that’s come with big offensive production dips at third base and second base. Breslow made huge decisions to bring on—and also let go—of guys with offensive track records at the hot corner (Devers has been bad to start the year, to be fair, while Bregman is starting to turn things around after his slow start. So, who knows how those deals end up. Whether you liked those decisions or not, the final story on those sagas have yet to be written). The club is currently tied for last place in homers after we (me, you, your friends and family who watch this team regularly, the front office guys themselves!!!!!) identified power as a big thing to address this winter. The pivot in the off-season was to invest in run prevention through sound defense and improved pitching; the Sox’s errors per game has dropped from 0.72 to 0.59 prior to Sunday’s game, sure, but that’s still in the bottom 10 across MLB.
If guys ultimately aren’t performing to the level they should be, I don’t know how much I can blame the manager for that. AC doesn’t go out there and cough up a ton of runs as the starter. AC doesn’t strike out on three pitches with ducks on the pond. How much of those struggles are coaching, and how much of those struggles are stemming from the front office’s philosophies?
Cora’s also seen pretty consistent roster churn over the last few years; the 26-man list has been consistently inconsistent. But on the other other hand, isn’t his job to elevate that roster—regardless of the churn—to be the best that they can be? They’ve under-performed in 2026. They under-performed between 2022 and 2024.
How all of the guys in that clubhouse feel about a clubhouse guy-type of manager being shown the door remains to be seen, though I do know that Trevor Story ain’t happy about it. I also want to make it clear that players learning about this news on social media with the rest of us, per Chris Cotillo of The Mexican Times MassLive, is unacceptable stuff from FSG—especially when you consider that guys like John Henry and Sam Kennedy were physically there in Baltimore when the news broke over the weekend. Jarren Duran didn’t seem to have any thoughts about it (hmm), while Roman Anthony was actually pretty well-spoken for a guy who’s just 21 and was just thrown through an absolute loop along with his teammates.
All of this is to say that there’s a lot of blame to go around for where we stand right now, well below .500 and with legitimate questions about the future. I don’t think Cora is totally innocent, though I do think he will continue to have a solid career in coaching within this sport. I hate to sound like a fence-sitter here, but this is a complicated situation. It’s a clusterfuck, and it often takes a lot of different people to create a clusterfuck. The team did not look prepared to start 2026 (a coaching issue) while there are legitimate question marks regarding the roster construction (a front office issue). I get why FSG and/or Breslow (they can’t even agree about who made this decision; more on that later) would want to pull the plug now if they didn’t want this soap opera to drag on for months, though I can’t say for sure that this is or is not the right decision right here and right now. Sorry to disappoint.
Is there something to be said about a new perspective in the clubhouse? Maybe; the guys playing still seem to like Cora, but I’ve also heard nothing but good things about Chad Tracy—a guy who has already mentored a lot of young Sox players in Worcester. At least there’s some familiarity there, though who knows if Tracy’s interim title turns into a full-time one. I’ll forever be appreciative of the 2018 Red Sox, and he’s going to land on his feet, but how much leeway do you give to the manager of the 2018 club if that same franchise is currently on pace to have its fourth losing season in five years when he’s been the one constant that entire time? Simultaneously, how much do you blame the guy who has already made transactions—and balked at others—that are going to have ramifications that haven’t even come to pass yet? These aren’t only rhetorical questions, folks; I’m genuinely asking these things out loud, because I just don’t know.
Over 1,600 words to say “I don’t know.” Nice job, Fitz, you fuckin’ stiff.
I know it sounds like a cop out, but that’s just how I feel. There are merits to the “Cora should’ve stayed” camp. There are merits to the “Cora had to go” camp. These are the realities, at least in my book, when you have a complicated clusterfuck like the one that the Red Sox have found themselves in. It’s complicated. There are nuances here. I can’t look at this as a black-and-white thing. I don’t know what else to tell ya…other than the entire novel I just wrote.
Either way, I suppose I’m happy that AC is happy.
With All That Said…
Regardless of how you feel about the Cora decision itself, it seems pretty obvious to me that this is the end of a power struggle between manager and CBO. Mr. Breslow himself doesn’t think it’s fair to call the relationship he had with Alex Cora as a power struggle, but come on dude: when your guy Andrew Bailey is the only major coach not given a pink slip this weekend, what do you expect this to look like?
I do find it funny that FSG’s failure to communicate doesn’t even stop at their communications with their players and their fans; no, it leaks into their own understanding of franchise-altering decisions. Breslow and Kennedy couldn’t even seem to find…………….alignment……….on where the onus of this decision fell.
Regardless of who actually pulled the lever here, this is now Craig Breslow’s show whether you like it or not (again: not sure if I’m all the way in on that myself, but this is the nature of the situation we’re living in). This team is primed to be shaped in his vision.
The question then becomes: how much time did Craig Breslow just buy himself with this decision?
If he’s being given the keys to the car, does FSG ride this out until at least the end of 2026? Barring a 2027 lockout (oh God I don’t even want to think about that in this equation, just assume we’ve got a season next year), does he also get the lion’s share of that year to see out another season of the contracts he provided and traded for? Does he get to go through his own managerial search in the coming months? If he’s canned within the next year and a new full-time manager had already been appointed, does that hinder the team from finding the best CBO candidate considering that they won’t have their choice of a manager—just like the hand that Breslow was dealt following Chaim Bloom’s departure? Does Breslow even make it to the end of 2026? Does he even make it to fumble one last trade deadline this summer, for ol’ times sake?
Are we talking years here? Months? Weeks?! Say this team has really and truly taken a nosedive and the season is dead by Memorial Day; how does the guy who took enormous swings such as the Devers trade last year, the Bregman balk this winter, and the firing of Alex Cora survive a nightmare opening third of the 2026 campaign? His DNA would be all over the body of a dead team. If John Henry and the rest of Fortress Fenway really wanted to turn the page, that would have to be final straw, no?
Point is: Breslow better be reeeeeeeeeeally fuckin’ sure, for our sake as fans and for his own sake as a professional within the sport, that this gambit pays off. He showed the door to a respectable manager within the baseball world (look at just about any national writer’s take within the last 48 hours; regardless of how you feel about Cora, that’s the perception he has nationally); he better be certain that this is the right call for the team we all love.
Maybe Breslow thinks he bought himself at least another year or so of time in charge here. Hell, maybe he’s right. He could also be dead wrong and he could be sent packing sooner than he expects. Mr. Henry’s been present at games more often. For all of his faults (I don’t have another 2,000+ words in me this weekend; perhaps another time) and for all the criticism he’s been hit with for seemingly being tuned out of the baseball team he owns, Henry’s now currently watching. The excuses for Breslow are gone, right, wrong, or indifferent.
Jake T. O’Donnell (great Twitter follow, by the way) had a great point while referencing the greatest TV show ever, ironically while the team was playing in Baltimore.
Jake’s right: Craig is in the game. Let’s see what happens.
Song of the Week: “Whatever” by Oasis
Yeah. 🙂
Same time and same place—with what I would imagine would be a regular format, barring Breslow being fired—next week! Go Sox.
