Baseball managers have very little say in whether or not their teams score 17 runs in a game, and only marginally more in whether or not their teams only allow one. Nevertheless, the optics of firing a coach—amendment: six coaches—right after a 17-1 victory are at the very least strange enough that Boston Red Sox management might have considered deferring the decision for one more day. They did not, and so, in full, manager Alex Cora, bench coach Ramón Vásquez, hitting coach Peter Fatse, third-base coach Kyle Hudson, assistant hitting coach Dillon Lawson, and hitting strategy coach Joe Cronin departed Baltimore unceremoniously after a 17-1 victory, on a black van that had COACHES4HIRE printed on its side. (The website coaches4hire.com is currently down.)
This being baseball, it is not the first time a coach has been fired after winning by a 16-run margin, though the last time was on May 30, 1887, and included such proper nouns as "Cyclone" Ryan, "Lip" Pike, and the Cleveland Blues. In this case, the New York Metropolitans beat the Blues 18-2 and then fired manager Bob Ferguson. According to Baseball-Reference, the Metropolitans were eighth in the American Association with a record of 6-24, and the game, despite featuring 20 total runs, only lasted about 1:50.
The Red Sox, though they are last in the American League East, have at 11-17 a better record than the New York Metropolitans did, but the rationale behind "fire everyone but the pitching staff" is at least clear. With a wRC+ (Weighted Runs Created plus, perhaps the most complete catch-all metric for baseball offense) of 84, the Red Sox are currently the third-worst offensive team in baseball, ahead of only the modern-day New York Metropolitans, and their wretched nemeses-in-arms, the Philadelphia Phillies. Most notable would be the performance of former rookie Roman Anthony, who is undergoing a pretty dramatic sophomore slump, posting a wRC+ just over 90 compared to his previous season's mark of 140. That said, Red Sox pitching has hardly been stellar in isolation. Though the precise ranking depends on which standard and/or peripheral metrics the beholder favors, it firmly in the range of below average to very bad.
It is unclear to anyone, however, how firing everyone will fix this problem. Though according to ESPN's original report game planning and run prevention coach Jason Varitek would only be reassigned, Varitek gave a thumbs down in a photo posted to Cora's Instagram stories of the fired coaches flying back to Boston. Players are also approaching a mini-mutiny. Pitcher Garrett Whitlock went into detail of who spoke and who didn't in the meeting the team's front office held with players: team owner John Henry and president Sam Kennedy did not speak, while Chief Baseball Officer (read: general manager) Craig Breslow spoke for two minutes, and interim manager Chad Tracy spoke for three to five. Whitlock said that players were not permitted to ask questions of Cora's firing, and that "[t]hey made it very clear that we get paid to play baseball and we need to just focus on playing baseball." Veteran shortstop Trevor Story said that explanations given by the front office were not sufficient, and that "[i]t’s up in the air what the true direction of the franchise is."
Cleaving closest to the company line was Anthony. "[Cora] and the staff was here when I committed to it, but I committed to [Breslow], I committed to Mr. Henry, I committed to Mr. Kennedy," Anthony said. "I committed to the city and the people around me and my teammates."
It is true, from Anthony's shorter perspective of two seasons, that Breslow and Cora shared an equal tenure on the Red Sox. But go back a little further and Cora has outlasted multiple front-office regimes: He was hired by Dave Dombrowski (now with the Phillies), then served out his suspension for his involvement in the Houston Astros' 2017 sign-stealing scandal and running a similar operation in Boston, then was re-hired by Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom, and then re-signed to a long-term deal by Breslow, Bloom's successor, before being fired by Breslow. If there is blame for Cora's failings, it would have to sit with three separate front offices, which would imply a different and even larger underlying problem with the Red Sox, perhaps the same one that led to the no-win trade of Rafael Devers or the Mookie Betts situation. Or, as one unnamed former Red Sox player put it evocatively, the firing of Cora was the equivalent of "shitting your pants and then changing your shirt."
Alex Cora released a statement on his Twitter account at 4:12 a.m. ET: "Happy!😊"
