Red Sox manager Cora shaves his beard and shakes up the lineup

ATLANTA — Alex Cora knew he had to change something.

Instead, he changed two things.

Cora finally shaved his beard on Tuesday ahead of the Sox’ series-opener with the Braves in Atlanta, telling reporters that he was being a little superstitious in hopes that the dead offense would turn it around. He changed the lineup, too. Kiké Hernandez was back in the leadoff spot, the slumping Trevor Story got moved to sixth, Rafael Devers went back from third to second, J.D. Martinez took over in the three-hole and Xander Bogaerts was moved to the cleanup spot.

“Flip-flopping the big boys and we’ll see what happens,” Cora told reporters. “Right now, we’re just trying to figure it out. It’s not throwing pasta at the wall to see what sticks. No, it’s that we have some capable guys who right now aren’t swinging the bats well. So hopefully moving them around is going to benefit us.”

Story moved to sixth: Story has unquestionably been the biggest disappointment of the season so far. After signing a six-year, $140 million contract, the longtime Colorado Rockies shortstop entered Tuesday with a .194 average and .545 OPS that rank among the worst in MLB.

Hitting coach Peter Fatse told NESN that he was concerned about Story swinging underneath fastballs, but trusted that he’d figure it out. Story is uncharacteristically struggling against the fastball, hitting just .171 with a .220 slugging percentage against heaters after hitting .269 with a .495 slugging percentage off them last year.

Almost all of his damage this year has come against hanging breaking balls, which he’s had no trouble slugging into the gaps for extra-base hits, but is still looking for his first home run.

“At the end of the day you know that was going to happen; it’s going to be bases loaded and he’s going to come up to the plate and we still believe in the player,” Cora said. “We’ve done this before. We’ll keep trying to move them around and see what makes sense for us. Today it just makes sense against a good pitcher (Kyle Wright) today.”