The Boston Red Sox made one of the most surprising moves of the 2026 Major League Baseball season when they opted to fire former manager Alex Cora — and a handful of coaches — after a 10-17 start to the campaign.

Boston entered the season with high expectations, but the beginning of the campaign didn't align with the goals of the organization. Boston moved on from Cora and turned the reins over to Chad Tracy, who initially was in an interim role. Boston turned its season around and the interim tag eventually was removed. The dust has now clearly settled. On Monday, Rob Bradford of WEEI shared a new episode of the "Baseball Isn't Boring" podcast featuring Cora and he opened up about why he thought the decision was made to move on.

"I honestly feel like we got fired — or I got fired — because we didn't pitch in the month of April," Cora said. "As simple as that. The two games in Minnesota, right, [Garrett Crochet] and [Sonny Gray], they struggled. Obviously now, everybody knows about Garrett. Go to the Houston series. We went [Ranger Suarez] and [Brayan Bello] and Crochet ... We didn't pitch. We were in that situation in April because we didn't pitch and that was something that I told the coaches before that we had to make sure we got it right."

Alex Cora Isn't Wrong

Cora isn't wrong, by any means. The Red Sox finished the regular season with the third-best team ERA in baseball at 3.54, despite the fact that Crochet missed the vast majority of the 2026 season. That wasn't the case in April, though.

Boston built its roster heading into the 2026 season with a focus on elite pitching and defense. The Red Sox lost Alex Bregman before the season and fully leaned into the idea of run prevention. In April, the Red Sox had the 21st-best team ERA in baseball at 4.26. In March, the Red Sox were 25th in the league with a 4.78 ERA in five games.

That's the difference in the season. Boston didn't build a lineup full of 30-plus-homer sluggers. Instead, the focus was pitching and defense. When they had bad pitching and a lack of pop in the middle of the order, it led to plenty of losses. Again, the Red Sox were 10-17 when Cora was fired.

The Red Sox really started to turn their season around at the end of June. The success carried over into July. Throughout the month of July, the Red Sox led the league with a 2.91 team ERA in 25 games. The closest team to Boston was the New York Yankees, who had a 3.03 team ERA in 25 games.

Cora isn't wrong. The Red Sox didn't enter the season with a massive margin for error because of a lack of power. When the Red Sox didn't pitch well, the whole machine failed.