Alex Cora 2017: "I wish I could win a World Series."
*finger on monkey's paw curls*
Alex Cora 2018: "That was fun. I wish I could win another World Series."
*second finger on monkey's paw curls*
Alex Cora 2020: "I wish..."
*sound of unspeakable thing clawing at door*

I feel about the same as you, Jose.

They can win without Cora. There's no reason to try to win with him, and many reasons to try to win without him.

It seems to be down to Cora and Fuld. It seems like Bloom wants Fuld and ownership wants Cora. Having laid out the case against Cora above I think I'd prefer him to Fuld in a vacuum. However, I like the idea of letting the GM (or whatever ####### title he has, I hate title creep) make that call and Fuld is a guy who seems like he could be very good. The last time ownership made the call over the GM it did not go well.

Having said that, of course Cora isn't Voldemort. Off the cuff if the choice is down to those two I feel pretty good whichever way the Sox go.

And it's Alex Cora.

I just don't really have any strong feelings about this? He's done well, the players seem to like him, I'm fine with it.

I'm a bit worried by the indications that this was ownership's decision rather than Bloom's - someone pointed out that Bloom went to PR to interview Cora while the other candidates came to Boston - but as it's seemed more and more inevitable, I've basically come back to how none of the things I liked about Cora have changed. He's still going to be exceptionally good about pulling in a ton of information and getting it to the players when it's most useful, he's still likely going to have great relationships with the players (and if you put much stock in what Jerry & Eck say during the broadcasts, that's a big deal for Devers in particular), he's hopefully still going to be accountable and willing to discuss his decision-making process.

How much will The Other Stuff affect his ability to do his job? I've got no idea. I don't know if resentful players might avoid Boston more in free agency because of this, or if the media will become more hostile and he'll pull back as a result. But it's not an awful decision, I don't think

They must really like him.

I don't like it. It's bad PR and they really don't need bad PR right now. And I don't think Cora is good enough of a manager to justify it.

Is that true Biff? My sense is that this is REALLY popular among most Sox fans.

Maybe I'm too online. It might be different in the 'real world' but my impression in online communities is that the move isn't loved.

My sense is that this is REALLY popular among most Sox fans.

It will remain popular only as long as the team wins.

Maybe I'm too online. It might be different in the 'real world' but my impression in online communities is that the move isn't loved.

It's kind of tough to tell how this is playing out among the more casual fans, what with not going most of the places I'd usually talk baseball with people. I suspect online is going to be super-skewed, though - it brings out both extremes and the folks who look at baseball as a whole rather than the hometown team, we're all salty from the especially-disastrous 2020 season(*), and the good zinger gets retweeted more than the relatively bland "I am happy about this". I suspect that for a lot of Red Sox fans, what happened with the Astros seems kind of distant, especially since the similar stuff with the Red Sox seemed much more about a thing everybody does but probably shouldn't (going to the replay room) that's hard to enforce.

(*) As someone who at times got very frustrated with Roenicke when the team underperformed even the low expectations - season previews were "they'll play a lot of 8-7 games and maybe wind up on the good end of some" rather than "they will be down 7 in the third every night and the rest of the game will drag on miserably until midnight" - and watched a lot of NESN where Dan/Jerry/Eck often commented about how Cora could have kept Devers from spiraling during a bad defensive run, I wouldn't be shocked if there were others out there who figured Cora was a bigger missing piece than he actually was. We weren't fed that, exactly, but there was enough out there that I could easily see the idea taking root.

Biff. Good ol' Biff. How are you?

Generally fine personally. More broadly, without delving too much into politics on this kind of forum...cautiously more optimistic than the previous 4 years.

Glad to hear that, Biff. You are highly regarded. Big fan.


Hey everyone, at least the Red Sox didn't hire LaRussa.