Alex Cora and the Red Sox are in agreement new contract: $7M-plus per year over 3 yrs
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This might be the best news I’ve seen in a while.
I have the think some of the player dev infrastructure put in place and the growing relationship with Breslow is the catalyst of this.
I have the think some of the player dev infrastructure put in place and the growing relationship with Breslow is the catalyst of this.
I feel much more confident in the future of this team with Cora at the helm. Feels like there must have been a recent change in the view of this team by upper management otherwise don’t think Cora would’ve been discussing contract during the season. Wouldn’t be surprised if more positive moves are to follow soon.
Let's see if it gets done. I believe this was put out there to counteract the Will Flemming comments out of HOF weekend. If it gets done, it's something that frankly should have been done a long time ago.
Not quite Counsell money, but it's good. If I were Cora, I'd go to the open market and just see if another team would beat this.
View: https://twitter.com/Buster_ESPN/status/1816180500404527611
View: https://twitter.com/Buster_ESPN/status/1816180500404527611
Passan's not a rumormonger, he doesn't usually report on stuff like this unless it's a done deal.
This is potentially great news. I'm on board. Second best Sox manager of my lifetime and it's not even close.
I wonder why Cora decided to negotiate during the season? I thought he said many times that he was not going to do that. What changed?
I wonder why Cora decided to negotiate during the season? I thought he said many times that he was not going to do that. What changed?
The articles you posted in this comment are from 3 weeks ago. A lot can change in that amount of time.
I’ve thought the whole way that they didn’t do this contract earlier because they wanted to give Breslow and Cora time to see how well they worked together. This news combined with the on-field results suggest to me that their relationship is going well.
I also wonder whether Breslow appealed to ownership to fast track this so as not to spoil an otherwise great season they could build of.
I also wonder whether Breslow appealed to ownership to fast track this so as not to spoil an otherwise great season they could build of.
I agree with your post verbatim. As to your question, I think he may see what we see which is that this team is arriving now.
Maybe he just said that to avoid questions every day about it. Guessing if the reports are true, he wanted to see how it was to work with Breslow and a sign that things will be different than under Chaim, and is satisfied with that and excited about the future.
Based on all the prior reporting, I was definitely of the opinion Cora was as good as good at the end of the season. I would be thrilled for him to be extended.
I wonder if the deal being negotiated calls for a fixed number of years in the dugout and then migration to a role in the FO?
You posted in the other Cora thread about Will Flemming returning from Hall of Fame weekend saying national guys were telling him more or less the exact same things three days ago. Either things changed really fast or the national reporters are way behind the times or they're just not as plugged in as they want us to believe.
Either way, this feels like a positive to me. One less question mark hanging over the team so now all the focus can be on the players for the next few months.
Or both sides did a good job of keeping this under wraps. Either way, it's a good thing Cora is back long-term. Would have hated to see him in the Bronx.
That was 17 days ago, and Cotillo has been writing about the likelihood of him leaving since the offseason.
Obviously it’s an appropriate topic to write about but a better reporter would make less of a leap from no comment to he’s virtually certain to leave. The overwhelmingly likely scenario seems to me that Cora didn’t want to conduct the negotiations through the press.
Cotillo also said back in December that the Sox “were gonna move” Kenley Jansen — that he wasn’t just suggesting it. Then he wrote dozens of articles about how the Sox were cheap for trading him, which the team actually didn’t do.
Well, now I believe the deal is off.
More seriously. Call me a waffler, but I am happy with this. I have dogged Cora a lot in the past, a lot, but I admit he has won me over this year with what he has gotten out of these kids, and how much he has foster a clubhouse where the players clearly enjoy playing and seem to love each other.
I also think it is really important for this organization to get some stability after the last 5+ years of utter turmoil, and this is a step in the right direction.
Very pleased with this news.
I do wonder if Cora and his reps were taking a look at this coming off season and the roles that might be available out there (which is surely somewhat limited by those teams that won't be able to stomach the PR they'd have to run to hire him, like here in L.A.) - and said, it's a better bet to lock it in now? Maybe he doesn't think there's good options upcoming and he doesn't want to go into temp-casting.
I do wonder if Cora and his reps were taking a look at this coming off season and the roles that might be available out there (which is surely somewhat limited by those teams that won't be able to stomach the PR they'd have to run to hire him, like here in L.A.) - and said, it's a better bet to lock it in now? Maybe he doesn't think there's good options upcoming and he doesn't want to go into temp-casting.
Could be more than Counsell money if it extends a couple more years at higher prevailing wages. But I do expect a transition to the front office.
Poor ‘Tek and Dustin will have to make other plans.
MLB managers make less than I had assumed, wouldnt have thought 3/21 is "2nd highest paid manager".
Cora is fine with me, I'm not fully enamored with him as some seem to be, but we could definitely do much worse.
I kinda figured he would get more on the open market but I guess he did want to stay.
Cora is fine with me, I'm not fully enamored with him as some seem to be, but we could definitely do much worse.
I kinda figured he would get more on the open market but I guess he did want to stay.
He's a better manager than a player, at least in a Sox uniform. (and I liked him when he was a player for the Sox)
You really didn't need to add the "of my lifetime qualifier." Cora's no lower than #2 in franchise history, no question.
Fake Edit: Rough Bill Carrigan did win back-to-back championships in 1915-16, but after retiring for a while he came back to lead the Sox to three straight last-place finishes in the 20s which kind of tarnished his previous record.
You never know how many old bastards are on this board and whether they're going to stick up a finger and say, "Uhm actually ..."
There actually is a big question. Managers used to manage a lot more by feel and a lot less by analytics. Comparing generations of managers might be harder than comparing players.
Regardless, this is neutral in my book. He's good with the press, and his teams are sometimes good, sometimes bad. Pretty much like all other managers.
Very happy with this.
i believe it shows that Cora believes in this team and the upper mgt team.
i believe it shows that Cora believes in this team and the upper mgt team.
Cotillo's pet narratives always sound real enough to rile up the easily riled. But the spicier takes never have any sources.
Agreed on tactics, but managers have a lot more to do outside of the game. They have to massage egos, be the face of the franchise, have players buy into what the front office is selling. Especially on the latter point how many times have you heard/read about players calling the FO "nerds" and aren't clued into what their plan is. Cora has to not only explain that plan, but get the player to--maybe not agree with it, but accept it as the way things are done in the organization. If you have a manager with a good relationship with the people upstairs as Cora does, you normally have a team that's winning. When the relationship isn't there, like it was last year, the team usually plays bullshit baseball.
I think that the players respect Cora because he played the game and he shoots straight. Not a lot of managers do that. And he does it in Boston. When was the last time you heard that the clubhouse was in turmoil?
There's a whole entire forum dedicated to the media, stop derailing threads. I even got you started, you can start your screeds there.
Or, it's what was reported early last offseason: that he is eyeing a role in the front office. The three years sounds conpicuously like a limit on how long he'd like to manage before moving up. And it covers the integration of all the prospects we know of innto the lineup, if they're still here. He probably could have had Counsell's deal but he doesn't want 5 years.
I agree with a lot of this. A manager's job really has changed a hell of a lot over the years, for better or worse.
The issue I have is that it seems easy to blame the FO when things go badly and the manager when things go well. It seems fairly commonplace across baseball, not just with the Sox. This year's team and last year's team aren't drastically different personnel-wise, but Cora gets credit for this year, seemingly without getting commensurate blame last year. Why didn't he get last year's team to play like this year's team? The narrative that last season he didn't have anything to work with but this year he's getting the most out of the team doesn't make much sense to me. I know he didn't get along with Verdugo, but Verdugo didn't sink the team.
I've said before, and it's just my opinion, that the impact of the manager on the team's results are negligible in this era. The Great Tito retired, and the Guards seem to be doing okay. Bruce Bochy was magical again last season, but lost his wand this season. I just think that it's a players league, the manager is basically the front man for the organizational philosophy, and managers help around the margins. Also, luck is needed.
All this is to say that I'm fine with Cora, but I don't think the Sox would have been any worse off with our own Stephen Vogt.
I get it and like I said, I think that you're right. The days where a manager can screw up an entire year by bumblescrewing game after game after game are probably over. They're usually on a really tight front office leash.
And again you're correct about last year's team versus this year's team. We can theorize a bunch of reasons, most of which are probably untrue, but he does seem to be more plugged in this year than last. Is that a negative? I guess it depends on the way you viewed last year's FO. Last year's Cora could be the rage against the machine Cora who didn't give a shit because he thought that the FO was leaving him out to dry. While this year's Cora is more plugged in because he gets along with Breslow. Like I said, it depends on your view of the FO and ultimately professionalism (assuming that I'm right, which I'm probably not).
But I guess the bottom line is that I'm glad he's back. I like Cora a lot, he seems like a good dude and the Red Sox (and all of baseball) can use as many good dudes as possible.
Jeez. I guess nothing can be as it seems. They're only doing this because of what Will Phucking Phlegmming said about what a bunch of other people "think." And even if they are, it should have been done long ago.
Or maybe, the time off of the ASB gave them the opportunity to nail it down without games going on after both sides had a half season to see how they got along when it counted.
I would have been fine moving on from Cora after last season finished but he seems a lot more energized this season so glad to see him sticking around. The energy, athleticism and scrappiness of this team seems to have given him a boost this year. He seems somewhat of a father figure to a lot of the younger guys which seems to be helping both ways.
He's unequivocally a good dude, Raffy seems to really like him, and I love Raffy. Down deep, I'm a pretty simple guy.