What we’re hearing on why Red Sox fired Alex Cora and the fallout of the shocking news

Discussions lasted throughout the day, with Breslow, Kennedy and Henry weighing their options. Also contributing to the discussions, some remotely, were team advisor/minority owner Theo Epstein, team chairman Tom Werner and Fenway Sports Group president Mike Gordon, according to sources.

By the end of the day, the group had reached a consensus that a change was necessary. On Saturday morning, the trio of Henry, Kennedy and Breslow flew privately to Baltimore while the team prepared for a hastily-arranged noon start, made necessary by forecasts of heavy rain later in the afternoon. As Boston routed the Orioles, the decision-makers arrived at the team’s hotel, The Four Seasons Baltimore.

Not long after the game, Breslow contacted Cora and told the manager that they needed to talk when Cora returned to the hotel. As a courtesy, Breslow revealed that Kennedy and Henry were with him, a detail that tipped Cora off as to what was happening.

Cora returned to the hotel, and as requested, reported to the fourth-floor Viridian Conference Room — a room that ironically shared a name with a Fenway-area apartment building in which numerous Red Sox coaches have lived over the years. It was there that Cora, and then many of his coaches, were informed of their fate.

Numerous sources pushed back on the notion that Cora was offered the opportunity to stay with the Red Sox with a different coaching staff. By the time Henry, Kennedy and Breslow chartered the jet for the Saturday morning flight, the decisions were final. Notably, if Cora had “fallen on the sword” and told the Red Sox to fire him because of coaching changes he didn’t agree with, he would have risked not being paid the remainder of the $15 or so million left on his contract, which runs through 2027.

As word spread through the hotel — largely via players calling, texting and FaceTiming each other ahead of a team meeting Sunday morning — players scrambled to say goodbye. A large wedding in the lobby further complicated things. Some players rushed to give farewell hugs to the dispatched coaches. Others expressed their gratitude by sending high-end liquor bottles to the group as a parting gift.

As he returned from dinner with Henry and Breslow, Kennedy — in a hushed tone — said the decision to fire Cora “ranked right up there” with the hardest calls of his career. Further evidence of that came early in the week, when Kennedy and Cora — no longer co-workers — spent a significant amount of time together in Boston, even after the firings.

*** Red Sox teams have struggled out of the gate in the past, including in seasons with Cora as manager. Those clubs largely steadied the ship with veteran leaders stepping up to keep teammates on course.

It was clear, very fast, that the early-season struggles hit the 2026 club in a different way. After a productive spring training in which the Red Sox stayed healthy and came together as a group in a way that had players excited for Opening Day, the vibes around the clubhouse turned sour very quickly.

As the Red Sox got off to a 2-8 start, a group of normally energetic, upbeat young players kept their head down in the clubhouse. The room, after losses, was funereal at times, with many members of the group in disbelief.

Cora tried to stay the course, his confidants say, but there was also an early sign that things were amiss. On April 1 in Houston, Cora pulled Carlos Narváez from the lineup after the catcher was late for a pregame meeting in a step sources described as uncharacteristic for Cora so early in a season.

Throughout his tenure, Cora was very selective about when to publicly admonish a player, preferring to keep things behind closed doors. Sitting Narváez, a beloved clubhouse presence who took accountability for his misstep, was a signal Cora wanted to take a stand and inject some life into his group.

*** Sources familiar with the Breslow-Cora dynamic don’t describe it as a bad relationship between the two former players, who briefly were teammates with the Red Sox in 2006. Any tension between the front office and uniformed personnel came from the age-old discrepancy between how the club’s data and models viewed things — and what the coaches were seeing with their eyes on a daily basis.

While some in the front office viewed the 2026 Red Sox — and their potentially elite pitching staff — to have the potential for a win total in the mid-nineties, coaches and players quietly entered the year with lower expectations because of the offensive deficiencies on the roster. A further disconnect between the organization’s data models and the eye test related to the logjam of outfield/designated hitter types.

On paper, it looked intriguing to have five talented players (Roman Anthony, Jarren Duran, Ceddanne Rafaela, Wilyer Abreu and Masataka Yoshida) mixing and matching. In reality, though, Cora found the situation difficult to manage — as he stated publicly, numerous times. The disruptions of routines and inconsistent alignments caused more harm than good in the eyes of some around the team after Breslow decided to keep all five players instead of trading Duran or trading or releasing Yoshida.

*** On Sunday, Breslow declined to define Tracy’s “interim” status, failing to guarantee the 40-year-old would be in Boston’s dugout for the rest of the regular season. Privately, Red Sox people have echoed that sentiment in recent days. There have been no assurances given — either to Tracy or his interim coaches — and Boston is assessing things on a day-to-day basis in an effort to keep its options open.

Still, it would seem unlikely the Red Sox will hire a more permanent manager in-season, with logistics proving complicated.

First, a second managerial change in the course of a few weeks — or even months — would prove highly disruptive. Already, Red Sox players are having to adjust to the firing of a popular manager and a handful of coaches, along with the arrival of his replacement, Tracy.

Tracy is both well-liked and respected by the clubhouse and the fact that more than three-quarters of the roster played for him in Worcester — either as homegrown players making their climb up the organizational ladder or while on temporary rehab assignments — helps ease the transition. Bringing in a third manager in the same season would probably represent a step too far.

Further, even if the Red Sox wanted another, more established manager to be hired on a long-term basis, they’re much better off waiting until after the season. In-season, the Red Sox would be limited to a rather small pool of candidates. The Sox could either hire an out-of-work high-profile figure (see: Buck Showalter, David Ross) or someone who is working in an advisory position for another team (Rocco Baldelli, Bob Melvin or Bruce Bochy for example).

But no team is going to want its own coaching staffs or organizations upended by giving permission to the Sox to hire away someone in the middle of the year. If they wait until after the season, they’ll have a far bigger list of candidates in play.

Of course, it’s also entirely possible that the Red Sox are impressed with the job Tracy does and extend him at the end of the season. The Red Sox, according to sources, did not discuss or consider anyone other than Tracy to be Cora’s interim replacement.

*** The impact of Driveline continues to be a hot-button topic in the Red Sox organization, and those on both sides of the debate have only intensified their stances since Saturday’s coaching purge. While Breslow is a believer in the data-driven player development organization, there is a faction of Red Sox players, former and current, who have expressed that they are against the methods, which are used by numerous teams around the league.

Those in the anti-Driveline camp contend that for all the preparation a player can do, the focus still needs to be mainly on having a “battle mentality” — and being able to make in-game adjustments — when the lights go on. Veteran players feel that has been lost in recent years.

Some with knowledge of the team’s thinking believe the Red Sox will become more analytical in their decision-making with Tracy as manager than they were under Cora. While Cora had autonomy over lineup construction and other in-game decisions since 2018, it’s fair to expect a more collaborative effort between the coaching staff and front office with Tracy, an interim rookie manager, running the show.

*** The math can get tricky when it comes to managers and coaches who get fired with term remaining on their contracts.

When a player is released in the middle of his contract or clears waivers and becomes a free agent, other teams are free to sign him and are responsible for only a pro-rated portion of the minimum salary while the original team pays the bulk of the remaining deal — minus the pro-rated minimum.

Take, for example, Masataka Yoshida. If the Sox simply released him today and he cleared waivers — as he surely would, since no one would want to be responsible for the approximately $35 million remaining on his guaranteed deal for this year and next — a team could sign him for only 80% (the portion of the remaining games to be played) of the MLB minimum of $780,000 for this year and another $780,000 next year.

But it’s different with managers and coaches, who have no major league minimum as part of their deals.

MLB has an agreement in place that should coaches or managers who are fired and later sign with other teams before the expiration of their original contracts, there is a shared cost.

Take Cora. He’s already made it known that he’s not interested in managing this year but presumably would be open to doing so next year.

Say the Phillies make another run at him after this season for 2027 and beyond. Cora is due to make $7.25 million next year in the final year of his three-year contract extension signed with the Sox in August 2024.

If the Phillies agreed to pay him, say, $6 million for next year, the Red Sox would be responsible for only the off-setting salary, or $1.25 million. MLB monitors these issues, so that a new team doesn’t offer to pay a manager who has term remaining with another club a paltry figure to lessen its financial load. If, for example, the Phillies tried to pay Cora just $500,000 to force the Sox to pay the vast majority of his salary, MLB would step in and disallow such a move.

The same goes for coaches, albeit for significantly lower salaries.

An industry source confirmed that among the fired coaches, Kyle Hudson, Pete Fatse and Jason Varitek are under contract to the Sox through the 2027 season. The length of term remaining on the contracts for Ramón Vázquez, Joe Cronin and Dillon Lawson is not known.

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