Two things can simultaneously be true.
On the one hand, Alex Cora is a great baseball mind who is capable of guiding teams to championships. On the other, the 2026 Red Sox won't miss him much, if at all.
That, though, says a whole lot more about this baseball team than it does about its now-former manager.
And with Cora now free to spend his spring, summer and fall in beautiful Puerto Rico while being paid roughly $13 million through 2027 to not manage the last-place Boston Red Sox, the question obviously becomes what's next for the franchise?
Clearly, by firing Cora along with a half-dozen other coaches, the people in charge decided to initiate a new era of Boston baseball. Whether that was right or wrong can be fairly debated, but it's more interesting to examine whether Sam Kennedy and Craig Breslow are actually capable of steering the franchise in the right direction -- a job that's difficult enough on its own before even considering the financial restraints that John Henry clearly applies to the roster.
Before we get to that question, consider these two quotes from Breslow, delivered the morning after Cora's ousting.
Quote one: "[Firing Cora and the coaching staff] really comes down to the belief that we have in the players, and the belief that we have in the group to accomplish what we set out to accomplish. And by acting today, it gives us 135 games ahead of us. So, we've got almost a full season's worth of run to take advantage of this fresh start and ultimately to compete for a division and a deep postseason run in the way that we talked about it and envisioned and believed heading into spring training."
So, the chief baseball officer still sees this year's team as one capable of competing for the AL East crown and making a deep postseason run.
Sure.
Got it.
Quote two: "Ultimately, responsibility for the performance on the field, it falls on me as the leader of the baseball operation."
That comment was the closest we got to the crux of the matter in this mess. Because the Red Sox' roster is bad.
Real bad.
Want to know how bad? Let's run through which parts of the roster are really even worth keeping as the team tries to reinvent itself on the fly in the middle of a baseball season while somehow still maintaining the goal of a deep playoff run.
The Good
In the long-term view, there are some promising young pitchers in Connelly Early and the recently called-up Payton Tolle. The latter's electric start vs. the Yankees -- albeit in a loss, thanks to the bullpen -- provided a spark that has sorely been missing from this largely lifeless team. And Early, whose spot in the rotation wasn't guaranteed this spring, has looked the part of a big league starter thus far.
The question with Tolle will be his consistency. After his similarly electric debut last year against Paul Skenes and the Pirates, he allowed seven runs (and four homers) over just five innings in his next two starts. This time, he couldn't make it through the fifth in his follow-up start, getting tagged for three runs.
Ranger Suarez, after allowing eight earned runs over 8.1 innings in his first two starts, has stabilized, posting a 1.35 ERA over his last four starts. He is, as expected, fine. Garrett Crochet's rough start and new shoulder injury are both concerning, but he remains the ace for the foreseeable future. Aroldis Chapman doesn't get to play much but doesn't appear to have taken a step back from his career year last season, and there's no reason to doubt Garrett Whitlock's ability to remain a consistent setup man. (If things continue to go south, Chapman could -- and should -- present a prime opportunity for the Red Sox to bring in prospects ahead of the trade deadline.)
Offensively, there's still reason to be high on both Roman Anthony and Marcelo Mayer ... even if their current numbers are frightening. Willson Contreras was a hit in free agency for Breslow, and Wilyer Abreu remains a capable middle-of-the-order bat for a solid baseball team.
Ideally, a team aiming to compete for a division title and make a deep playoff run will have more than 10 players who provide a basis for that belief. Alas, that's where the Red Sox are.
(The catching duo of Connor Wong and Carlos Narvaez is fine. Not "good," per se, but definitely not bad.)
The Bad
Everyone in the organization who is still waiting for Jarren Duran to recapture whatever was going on in 2024, well, hopefully they're not holding their breath. It's not happening. From his debut in 2021 through '23 (193 games), Duran posted a .729 OPS. In 2024 (160 games), he posted an .834 OPS. Since the start of the '25 season (183 games), he's posted a .734 OPS. He is what he is, and that's not a star player like the team wants him to be.
Caleb Durbin is still a young(ish) player and showed enough promise as a rookie for Milwaukee last season to believe he can turn things around, but the man is hitting .172 this season. He's played in all but two games this year, which is almost unfathomable considering how crowded the infield is on paper and how poorly he's performed at the plate.
On that note, in the Durbin-Andruw Monasterio-Isiah Kiner-Filefa trio, you'd probably aim to have one of those players as a utility player on a good team. Having all three does nothing for anybody.
Likewise, though the rarely used Masataka Yoshida sports a decent .265 batting average and a team-best .390 on-base percentage, there's just not a lot of room in Major League Baseball for an outfielder who hits singles, draws walks, and can't play defense. He remains in Boston for one reason and one reason only: Chaim Bloom signed him to a five-year, $90 million deal. If Henry has to pay that money to Yoshida, then Yoshida is going to remain on the Boston Red Sox.
Staying in the outfield, Ceddanne Rafaela more than made up for his below-average bat last year by being the best center fielder in baseball, evidenced by his Fielding Run Value on Baseball Savant being in the 99th percentile. This year, Rafaela's in the 53rd percentile. If he's not bringing elite center field defense, then he's not bringing anything. (His outstanding catch to rob Giancarlo Stanton of extra bases a couple of weeks ago provided a sign that he was perhaps coming out of his early-season fielding slump.)
Sonny Gray is an injured 36-year-old making $31 million (and a $10 million potential buyout looming in the offseason), looking like he might have been an expensive mistake by Breslow. Meanwhile, Johan Oviedo (acquired in the trade with Jhostynxon Garcia) managed to make just one mop-up appearance before landing on the IL, where he'll remain until at least June.
The relief trio of Greg Weissert, Danny Coulombe and Ryan Watson has combined for 27.1 innings. Those have not been a pleasant 27.1 innings of work.
The Ugly
Of all the twisted narratives to spin off the Cora firing, the idea that Trevor Story opted in to the final two-plus years of his deal last winter because he wanted to play for Alex Cora.
Ha!
Story opted into his contract because zero MLB teams were going to line up and give him $55 million guaranteed over the next two years. This may be considered a bold assertion amid a sea of underperforming starters, but nobody looks more lost at the plate this year than Trevor Story. He's sporting a .532 OPS (the 10th-lowest mark among qualified hitters in baseball), with 40 strikeouts and just 24 hits. He ranks 48th out of 54 qualified shortstops in Fielding Run Value, placing him in the 15th percentile.
The change in manager resulted in Story getting benched ... once. After taking a breather for Sunday's series finale in Baltimore, he played every inning in the three games in Toronto, presumably indicating that Chad Tracy intends to play him just as much as his predecessor did.
One veteran who does not appear to be an early fan of his new interim manager is Brayan Bello, who very clearly disagreed with Tracy's decision to yank him from Wednesday's matinee in Toronto. Bello's numbers are jaw-dropping. He's allowed the most earned runs (26) in baseball and the most hits (43) in the AL.
His 9.12 ERA and 2.260 WHIP aren't the worst among qualified starters, because despite making all six starts this year, he's not a qualified starter. He simply hasn't recorded enough innings, averaging just 13 outs on the mound before getting pulled. He's seen the sixth inning just once this season.
In another situation, Bello would be primed for a classic fake IL stint, giving him time to work on his stuff and develop a new plan of attack. Yet with the aforementioned injuries to Crochet, Gray and Oviedo (along with Breslow's largely unnecessary trade of Kyle Harrison), Tracy has no other option but to roll with Bello every fifth day. He ought to be careful when he has to make his trip to the mound in the fourth inning going forward.
Taken in totality, the Red Sox have a roster with a few good veterans, a handful of promising young guys, a couple of ghastly underperforming players, and then -- with as much respect as possible -- a whole lot of nothing.
So, fine, Alex Cora is gone, and he's not coming back. Perhaps with his experience in the minors, Tracy is more qualified to manage a team that's short on big league talent. Sure. That's great.
But the manager was and is so clearly not the problem with the Boston Red Sox.
The problems are in the ever-changing spending philosophies from ownership, in the disingenuous platitudes spewed by Kennedy (in lieu of Henry actually speaking for himself), and in the ill-conceived roster decisions made by Breslow. He wasn't qualified for the position when he was the team's 11th choice to take over as the leader of the baseball operations department, he's been in over his head ever since, and he's given few reasons to believe he'll make the right decisions as the person "responsible for the performance on the field."
Abruptly firing Cora in late April may have been the first step toward a new era in Red Sox baseball, but it was merely a half measure. Without major front-office changes, the outlook for baseball in Boston moving forward remains dreary.