Cora pushing all the right buttons for the Red Sox
Boston manager proving to be the perfect hire for the American League champions
They don’t have to mention him by name, the inference being as obvious as the success the Boston Red Sox have had on the baseball diamond this season.
When describing the appeal of manager Alex Cora, player after Boston player talked about the open lines of communication and the respect with which they are treated. In other words, it’s a considerable, player-friendly upgrade over John Farrell, the man Cora replaced.
“For me personally, it’s communication,” Red Sox second baseman Brock Holt said this week. “Being able to know what’s going on, what’s going through his head when we’re playing, when we’re not playing, certain situations where we might come in during the game.
“It just makes it so much easier as a team to go out and perform. There wasn’t a whole lot of communication in the past.”
And there wasn’t a whole lot of winning beyond the regular season, either.
It’s the reason Boston president Dave Dombrowski fired Farrell despite back-to-back AL East titles and went outside the box to hire Cora.
That move looks brilliant now with the Red Sox arriving in Southern California with a 2-0 lead in the World Series and a post-season winning streak at six games.
Rick Porcello will get the ball in Friday’s Game 3 at Dodger Stadium as the Sox look to wrap up another short and clinical series on the way to a fourth Fall Classic victory in 14 years.
Much credit for the success is being heaped on Cora and for good reason. Hired a year ago from the Astros, he’s very much the model Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins went for in hiring Charlie Montoyo on Thursday.
Communication skills were high on the list of wants from the Jays, just as it apparently was for the Red Sox when they snared Cora.
“Obviously his baseball IQ is as off the charts as anybody I’ve ever seen,” Porcello told Postmedia when asked about Cora’s strengths. “More importantly his ability to communicate and connect with everybody in the clubhouse, you can’t take that for granted.
“There’s a lot of guys who aren’t able to do that. With the numbers kind of being in front of everyone, the hardest part is trying to figure out how to take those 25 guys from all different backgrounds and get them to be one consistent group. It’s almost an impossible job. You have to have incredible personal skills to do that and he has them. He’s extremely special.”
It hasn’t hurt that Cora can seemingly do no wrong this post-season. When he went all in to win Game 4 of the ALCS, potentially burning out arms, it was because he believed David Price would come through the next night. If not, his team had to win only one of three to advance.
Cora will be pressed into making some key decisions without his designated hitter in the games played in Los Angeles and that could get tricky.
But there won’t be any secondguessing in the Red Sox’s dugout. The trust level with Cora is off the charts.
CORA ON MONTOYO
From one Puerto Rican to another, Cora was pleased to hear of the Montoyo hiring in Toronto and said as much Thursday afternoon at Dodger Stadium.
“He was my coach in one of the WBCs (World Baseball Classics); I think it was the second one,” Cora said of a compatriot he’ll see 19 times in the regular season when the Jays and Sox clash. “It’s cool. Another Puerto Rico manager in the big leagues. That’s awesome.”
There were many in Boston who were critical of Dombrowski’s selection, suggesting that a big baseball market like Beantown needed a proven manager.
Several times this post-season, Cora has talked about those challenges, how winning is more of a relief for some in Boston than an accomplishment.
But as we’ve seen through a 108-win season and a thus-far dominant playoff run, Cora was in fact a perfect hire for the market, diffusing pressure in the clubhouse and getting the best out of his players.
Is Montoyo the next Cora? Well that would obviously be a massive stretch.
But he should probably best be judged on how he and the team perform. And well beyond 2019 at that.
AROUND THE BASES
Yes, J.D. Martinez’s ankle is still bothering him after twisting it while rounding second in Game 1.
“We’ll see,” was Cora’s response when asked if he’s available for Friday night … Cora also said that outfielder Mookie Betts will not start at second base on Friday as had been widely suggested … Porcello is far from a writeoff at the plate. In interleague play this season, the Sox starter was 3-for-7 with a pair of doubles, one of those a three-run job against Washington’s Max Scherzer … Dodgers manager Dave Roberts obviously recognizes the significance of Game 3, but knows he can’t oversell it.
“I think the big take-away is you can’t win four games in one night. So just the focus on the one-game-at-a-time mentality.” … Among the many factors complicating a possible Dodgers comeback in the 114th Fall Classic is this: the Red Sox are a perfect 5-0 on the road this postseason. The Dodgers are the last team to lose the first two on the road and come back to win the series, however, doing so in 1981 … Have we seen the best of the Red Sox yet? Cora says no. “We still feel that we can be better. There’s a few things that over the course of the playoffs we haven’t done well, but that’s a cool thing about it: we’re in a good position.”