Boston Red Sox: Why re-hiring of Alex Cora is offensive

The Boston Red Sox have exposed their previous unease as insincere

What exactly is wrong with the Boston Red Sox re-hiring Alex Cora as their field manager?

If you will recall from last January’s report, Cora served as Houston’s bench coach during the scandal. As such, the report implicated him as a principal on-field architect of the wrongdoing.

In releasing its report on the Astros’ case last January, a report that included the levying of suspensions against Luhnow and Hinch, MLB at the time held up announcement of punishment for Cora pending completion of an ongoing investigation into use of similar improper tactics by the Red Sox in 2018. Cora was the team’s field manager that season.

Shortly after the release of the Astros report, the Red Sox and Cora announced what was described as a “mutual” agreement to “part ways.” When MLB announced its findings in the Boston case in April, it did not penalize Cora for anything he had done with the Red Sox, but did issue him the same one-year suspension it had given Luhnow and Hinch for Cora’s participation in the Astros’ wrongdoing.

That suspension, of course, expired with the end of the season, making Cora eligible to return now as manager of any team, including the Red Sox.

So why shouldn’t Red Sox Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom hire Cora back now that he’s eligible?

Because doing so is transparently hypocritical in a way that any other team’s hiring of Cora would not be…that’s why.

Keep in mind that the Red Sox separated themselves from Cora last January as a direct outgrowth of the Houston scandal. They were not required to do so. Had they retained Cora, he would eventually have been suspended, they would have replaced him with Ron Roenicke for the duration of 2020 and Cora would have returned at season’s end. Just as actually transpired.

That’s what the Sox could have done. But that is not what they did. They overtly acted to remove Cora, in the process making a very specific and obvious moral statement of disapproval of his role in the Astros’ sign-stealing business. Yes, I know, the parting was labeled as “mutual.” I’m calling BS on that. So, by the way, is the rest of the baseball world.

The problem with re-hiring him now is that if Red Sox management was repelled at having a franchise association with such a person in January, that revulsion could in the interim only have changed for reasons related to expediency. It is tacitly saying, “we only canned him because we knew we wouldn’t be able to use him, but now that we can use him we’re no longer offended. Having tacitly made that moral statement last January, the Red Sox are today reneging on it.

Alone among the 30 teams, the Red Sox are in that position. That’s why his re-hiring by Boston is offensive in a way that his hiring by any other team would not be.

The Tigers, for instance, made no similar judgment, either overt or implicit, about Hinch when Houston fired him. Like Hinch, Cora served his season-long suspension and was eligible to work again. He could have been hired by any other team…except by the one that purported to claim the moral high ground by letting him go in the first place.

The Boston Red Sox today ceded that high ground. They also exposed their previous action in dispatching their 2019 manager for what it was: naked expediency, nothing more.

That’s why Boston’s re-hiring of him was singularly wrong.