4/6-4/9 Red Sox @ Tigers Series Thread

Or fire the manager. lol

Cora is a terrific, WS winning manager. The problem is the lack of talent in this team.

Because the team is really not good. This is not on Cora, look at his track record. 2018, best Red Sox team ever. 2019 yeah it wasn't a good job there. 2021 he overachieved like crazy. 2022 and this year the talent is simply not good enough. This is a bad team. This is a team that unironically starts Christian Arroyo and Reese McGuire. This is a team with two really unproven players in Casas and Yoshida hitting at key spots. A team that has the walking corpses of Corey Kluber and Chris Sale as its top two pitchers. Ryan Brasier has a spot on the roster and I can probably pitch better than him! You better pray Houck and Whitlock are good, because otherwise you're **** out of luck. Again, there's just too many question marks.

I do know that injuries play a part and the team isn't that atrocious, it's just plain bad which is apparently fine enough these days! And hey, maybe I'm overreacting, it's still crazy early. But I DO know it's unfair to pin the blame on Cora. It's honestly revolting to suggest this is on him. If this team sucks again, it's on the people who built this roster.

Hopefully Sale looks better today or this team is ****ed.

Cora cam only play the hand he was dealt. It's still very early and at 2-4 the season is hardly over. That said, the Sox have a,transient core of ibterchangeable parts but no true core like they had five years ago. The Sox core has been in transition the past 5 years with little stability and in my opinion the core members have been downgraded and the results of that have reflected on the results on the field.

Personally I think the starting pitching is a lot of wishing and hoping and very little certainty. The lineup is on the thin side in my opinion. Yea they'll score runs here and there as I dont think it's a button of the league offense but I think it's a middle of the pack offense with no real threat other than Devers. Maybe Yoshida an Ms Casas emerge, but again the lack of uncertainty, the kind of Xander offered.

Their 3xguys who would take the most advantage of the SB rules are Mondesi, Duran, and Hamilton and none of them are hitters or regularly get on base. The last guy that did....well he was traded away and the Sox dont have that kind of athleticism and dynamic in the lineup. It's an early impression. The team isnt good enough to seriously compete and I dont think they're bad enough to collapse. I think they'll hover around .500. They're a middle of the pack team with a middle of the pack farm system. I think their manager and GM are probably toward the middle. They are what they are. I dint think Cora being dismissed is going to change what they are on the field or alleviate their disadvantages

I wouldn't be shocked if the Sox swept. I also wouldn't be surprised if they lost 2 out of 3 with the way Sale and Crawford pitched. This team needs to right the ship in a hurry.

Those are fair points. It's hard to blame the manager if the team is just bad, but how do we grade Cora based on what we've seen the last 2 years?

Managers don’t matter that much. Pretty much that simple

Dusty Baker’s best quality is that he’s likable and that’s gotten him a lot farther than most tacticians.

In general I’m in the camp that people way overstate the managers ability to influence outcomes. Will say though I thought Cora pressed all the right buttons in 2018, and I haven’t been nearly as impressed since with his bullpen management, lineup decisions, etc. I do think that the manager deserves some blame/credit for poor fundamentals too, or an unhappy/happy clubhouse (which by all reports so far the team has great vibes). But I think we’re probably talking about marginal differences to wins over a season here.

Do no harm. I think managers (like umpires) stand out far more often when they mess up than when they succeed. Tito is no genius, but he doesn’t overthink it.

Is Cora even managing the lineups anymore? Last year Cora was fully intent on getting Kiké the leadoff spot, despite all his deficiencies against RHP. This year Kiké hasn't hit above 7th I don't think.

He has burnt out some guys in the past in the bullpen. Matt Barnes seems like obvious candidate number one on that list. In Cora's defense, he's never had a great bullpen ever here. Even in the 2018 playoffs, he was using starting pitchers as set up men.

Bloom might be to blame for not building enough good depth in a bullpen, to give Cora enough arms so he can rest more guys.

Don't know how firing Cora would get to anywhere. The players like him and respect him. He's a Boston guy forever. He knows everything baseball. It's hard to teach grown men fundamentals. At this point, you either have the capacity for it or you don't.

He'll probably be the fall guy, however. If they suck this year, you would be a crap team 3 out of the last 4 years. That doesn't really fly in Boston.