The Boston Red Sox remain in full offseason mode, retooling after a dead-last finish in the American League East last season. However, this hasn’t stopped the premature 2023 season predictions from rolling in.
And one about Red Sox manager Alex Cora is bold, to say the least.
With 2022 a daunting chapter of the past, moving forward next season won’t be easy. This rings especially true for Cora. While Boston’s front office has made a few additions, like Kenley Jansen and Masataka Yoshida, they’ve also lost a few household names, like Xander Bogaerts and Nathan Eovaldi.
This poses a major upcoming challenge. Yet, MLB.com writer Anthony Castrovince made an early prediction in favor of Cora. He predicted that Cora will win AL Manager of the Year, which if happens, would mark his first since debuting as a skipper in 2018.
“The Red Sox stunk in 2022, which, if recent history holds, means they won’t stink next year,” Castrovince wrote Wednesday. “Cora is one of the best baseball minds in the game, and most people have moved on from the sign-stealing scandals he was involved in. If the Sox were to rise from the East cellar to somehow reach October, Cora would be an obvious AL Manager of the Year candidate. Right now, it’s hard to say how the heck they would do that, but, again, they have been known to fluctuate between extremes, and this award rewards extreme overachievement.”
As Castrovince noted, the Red Sox have fluctuated in the standings in recent years. In the seasons prior to their 2013 and 2018 World Series wins, the Red Sox won zero playoff games. With Boston coming up short of postseason contention in two of their last three campaigns, there’s certainly room to improve.
Last season the Red Sox wrapped up their record at 78-84. Most notably, they never found their stride against division opponents and went 26-50. With plenty of offseason time remaining, the Red Sox could further add before Spring Training in February.
In 2018, when the Red Sox set a franchise record in wins (108), Cora finished second in the voting. Former Oakland Athletics manager Bob Melvin took home the award and finished with 18 first-place votes to Cora’s seven.
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