Officially speaking, the Red Sox are a clown show. They are the Chuck Sullivan-Clive Rush Boston Patriots. They are the San Diego Clippers under Donald Sterling. They are the 21st-century New York Jets.
Where to start?
The Sox fired pretty much everybody last night while the team was in Baltimore, basking in the afterglow of a 17-1 victory over the Orioles – sort of like that dark day in ’65 when they fired their GM on the day that young Dave Morehead pitched a no-hitter. It turns out that Fenway fans chanting, “Sell the team,” and a 10-17 start were too much for owner John Henry and president of baseball ops Craig Breslow to bear.
Since they can’t fire themselves, Henry (who also owns the Globe) and Breslow took the long knives to manager Alex Cora, game-planner Jason Varitek, hitting coach Pete Fatse, hitting strategy coach Joe Cronin, assistant hitting coach Dillon Lawson, bench coach Ramón Vázquez, and third base coach Kyle Hudson.
Why stop there? I wonder. How does pitching coach Andrew Bailey get spared? Why are all the Driveline guys still here? And why is Breslow not accountable for the pathetic roster we’ve watched since March 26?
Worcester Red Sox manager Chad Tracy will take over as interim manager. Can anybody spell “Ron Roenicke”?
I’m all for shaking things up, and understand that you can’t fire all your players in late April, but put me down as one who did not think Cora was the problem with this Fenway F Troop.
It’s the roster. It’s the 26 guys Henry and Breslow gave Cora. That’s the problem.
Cora is the same manager who won 119 games for you in 2018. He’s the third-winningest manager in franchise history, a guy who relates to players, knows when the other team is tipping pitches, and is better than most when it comes to situations, matchups, and day-to-day lineups.
Cora is not the one who traded Mookie Betts, let Xander Bogaerts walk, and got no players in return for the salary dump of Rafael Devers.
Cora’s not the one who spent on the wrong players (Masataka Yoshida, Trevor Story), traded Chris Sale at exactly the wrong time, and pulled away from every big-name free agent last winter.
Cora is not the one who failed to give Alex Bregman a no-trade clause, then said, “If Alex Bregman wanted to be in Boston, he’d be in Boston.”
Cora is not the one who promised “full throttle,” then went middle market. Nor is he the one who came up with the snappy slogan of “pitching and run prevention” as the theme of this season.
Is it Alex Cora’s fault that a Red Sox third base position once filled by the likes of Frank Malzone, Wade Boggs, Devers, and Bregman is now manned by 5-foot-6-inch Caleb Durbin, he of the .165 batting average and one home run (off a utility player in mop-up duty Saturday)?
Now that Cora is gone, who will do those twice-a-day press briefings? I mean, how much Sam Kennedy can fans take?
For sure, Boston baseball fans won’t be happy that Varitek was bounced from the dugout and reassigned within the organization. The catcher-captain has been a Fenway fixture going all the way back to the Dan Duquette years, and was thought by some to be a manager-in-waiting. Nobody was more loyal to the team or put in more hours. But Varitek’s one of those being blamed for the Sox abject underachievement in this first month of the 2026 season.
Things just haven’t been the same around Fenway since that fourth championship of the 21st century in 2018. We’ve seen the firing of Dave Dombrowski, the hiring and firing of Chaim Bloom, and now Breslow at the wheel of a team entrenched in last place in the American League East.
You can be sure your friends in New York will be taking credit for breaking the Red Sox. It was the Yankees who bounced Boston from the first round of the playoffs last October, and just completed a non-competitive three-game Fenway sweep that demoralized Red Sox Nation.
This is a massive shakeup, not to mention a classic Saturday night news dump on the final day of the NFL Draft and the eve of critical Sunday playoff games for both the Bruins and Celtics.
Stay classy, Red Sox.
When local favorite Joe Morgan was fired by the Red Sox in 1991, he warned Sox fans that the players on the roster “aren’t as good as everybody thinks they are.” The Sox turned to Butch Hobson, then went straight into the dumpster for three years. This Sox roster is not very good. And now the shakeup is underway.
Unfortunately, the late Dick Williams, Joe Morgan, and Terry Francona are not walking through that door. And the problem most likely sits with the people who are still working at Fenway.
Context: The article criticizes the decision made by the Red Sox ownership to fire multiple key members of the team’s staff, including manager Alex Cora, amid a disappointing start to the season.
Fact Check: Some of the information in the article, such as the specific individuals fired and the comparison of the Red Sox to other sports teams, may be based on the author’s opinion and perspective.
