One thing's certain about 2024 Red Sox: Cora will be their skipper
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BOSTON -- While the Red Sox continue to look for their next leader(s) of baseball operations, there is no such uncertainty when it comes to who will manage the club in 2024.
Alex Cora has one year left on his contract and said he will be around to fulfill it.
“I’m good. I’ll be here next year,” Cora said.
Red Sox president/CEO Sam Kennedy indicated after the dismissal of Chaim Bloom as chief baseball operations officer on Sept. 14 that Cora’s job security was not in question.
Was Cora given assurances from ownership that he will be back no matter who is hired to run the front office?
“Yes, I’ll be here next year,” Cora reiterated.
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Cora said he wasn’t in position to say anything definitive about the coaching staff.
“Right now, I don't know much about the contracts, where we're at,” Cora said. “Most of them have more than one year left, and some of them have options. There's ongoing conversations about all that stuff, understanding where we're at as an organization. We’ll talk to [assistant general manager] Eddie [Romero], [executive vice president of baseball operations Brian O’Halloran], and the group about what we're going to do, and go from there.”
The Red Sox have had a disappointing 2023 season, in large part because of sub-par defense. Cora is already thinking about ways to address that going forward.
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“More work at JetBlue inside the stadium [in Spring Training],” Cora said. “I took that note like two months ago. When we go to Spring Training, we do a lot of stuff on the back fields, but we need to do more in the stadium – baserunning-wise, defensively. I know as far as the schedule is a little bit tough, but this is tougher [during the season]. We have to sacrifice a few things for the benefit of the group, and I think we'll do more at the stadium than any other years I've been here.”
The 2024 season will be Cora’s sixth as manager for the Red Sox. His record is 438-367 entering Wednesday’s game. The Red Sox won the World Series in Cora’s first season in 2018, and they reached the American League Championship Series in 2021, getting eliminated in Game 6 by the Astros.