Buster Olney Sites 'Sign-Relaying' As Root Of Red Sox Struggles

Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora ejected

Buster Olney Sites 'Sign-Relaying' As Root Of Red Sox Struggles originally appeared on NESN. Add NESN as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

Buster Olney is one of ESPN's leading Major League Baseball analysts. When it comes to cracking the code of the Boston Red Sox's early-season struggles, Olney is thinking way outside the box (pun intended).

Olney shared a now viral accusation on X to his more than 1.3 million followers. The accusation rehashes old criticisms of Alex Cora's sign-stealing scandals, or rather, sign-relaying.

The analyst shared a lesser-known rule change that went into effect this season, prohibiting base coaches from exiting the coaching boxes.

"One of the interesting theories about the struggling Red Sox offense in rival front offices is that Boston has been impacted significantly by the enforcement of the coaching boxes," Olney's post read. "The Red Sox were regarded by some other teams as being extraordinary at ascertaining grips/relaying pitch types to hitters -- and that advantage is now gone."

At face value, one could read this and think it's plausible that the Red Sox losing that advantage could be felt in their performance.

But to imply that simply the absence of potentially being able to know a few pitches a game could manifest itself in a playoff team becoming a last-place team, while ranking near the bottom in most hitting statistics, including home runs and slugging percentage, feels a little far-fetched.

There just doesn't seem to be a good link between the causation or correlation of Olney's claim.