The winter meetings are underway for Major League Baseball in Nashville, and with executives and agents from all around the league in one place, the biggest deals and trades often get done in the four-day extravaganza.
With new chief baseball officer Craig Breslow in attendance will the Red Sox be one of the many teams hoping to make a splash at the winter meetings? Maybe not if you paid attention to what Boston’s skipper Alex Cora said when he appeared on MLB Network’s “High Heat” on Monday.
Cora joked that if he had a magic wand, the Red Sox would simply need to score and prevent a lot of runs and win 105 games to be better.
All jokes aside, the Red Sox manager explained what he believes the club needs to do internally to improve.
“I do believe there’s a few things that we’ve got to do better as a baseball team,” Cora said. “I know the expectations of the fanbase and everybody else is to add this free agent or sign this big guy. But I do believe from my perspective, we need our guys to be better.”
Cora listed Red Sox pitchers Garrett Whitlock, Tanner Houck, Kutter Crawford and Brayan Bello as some of the players that needed to have better performances in the upcoming season for Boston to be successful.
Cora added: “We need Trevor Story to get back to the offensive force that he was in Colorado. We need (Rafael) Devers to be better at third base. Triston Casas, the way he finished the season last year, just take off from there and be a dominant first baseman.
“I do believe we’re gonna make some moves. We’re gonna get better. We’re gonna be deeper, but the core of the group … Jarren Duran, Alex Verdugo, Triston Casas, Raffy Devers, they need to be better.”
As far as the rotation, Cora said the most important thing was for Chris Sale to be healthy for the upcoming season and for other pitchers like Whitlock and Houck to bounce back from a tough year.
“Three of those guys last year were coming back from surgery,” Cora explained. “Their offseason was cut short. I don’t think they hit their stride during the season. From our end, we need our guys to be better, to improve and hopefully we can accomplish that.”
The Red Sox are very heavy on the left side of the plate and Cora addressed Boston’s need for a right-handed batter in the lineup.
“It’s very important for us to create balance and that’s something Craig (Breslow) and I have talked about throughout the process the last three weeks but we’ve just got to be patient,” Cora explained. “We’ve got some guys in the system that they’re really good as you know.”
Prospect Enmanuel Valdez made his Major League debut last season with the Red Sox. Cora said the versatile infielder was a good offensive player but had some hiccups defensively and noted Valdez is working on his defensive play in the offseason. Cora added Pablo Reyes as another player who swung the bat well from the right side of the plate last season.
“As of now, where we’re at, we’re very comfortable with those guys,” Cora said. “David Hamilton is another guy that had thumb surgery during the season. This guy’s an elite defender, an elite runner. He was hitting the ball hard last year.”
Cora added: “Right now, we’re comfortable with the group that we have, but as you know, every GM, every president of baseball operations is trying to improve and this is the time for that.”
It’s unknown how many moves the Red Sox will make during the winter meetings, if any, but all eyes are on who Boston could target besides Shohei Ohtani.
