The Red Sox sure are glad they inked Alex Cora to a contract extension, huh?
Boston didn’t make things easy on itself Friday, but got back into the win column with a come-from-behind victory over the New York Yankees at Fenway Park. It was a thriller from start to finish, with three total ties and two lead changes in the seventh inning on.
Aaron Judge crushed a 470-foot home run, which looked like it would be his first signature moment at Fenway. Ceddanne Rafaela responded, sparking a rally for the Red Sox. Wilyer Abreu came off the bench to provide a lift. Masataka Yoshida produced the game-winning hit, inching ever so close to “Yankee Killer” status.
Cora, however, was the star on Friday — displaying the value that now makes him one of the highest-paid managers in baseball.
Cora, much like he has throughout his managerial career, pushed all the right buttons.
Boston’s maestro began pulling strings in the sixth inning, when he made the quick change from Cam Booser to Josh Winckowski after a pair of hits off the former had the Yankees threatening. Result: Winckowski got out of the jam unscathed.
Cora wasn’t done making the right moves there, but that mostly has to do with the fact his two most reliable middle-relief arms had a blowup inning, with Brennan Bernardino and Zack Kelly combining to allow four runs in the seventh –including that Stantonian blast from Judge we talked about earlier. The Red Sox were able to bounce back in the eighth, though, as Cora made the decision to lift Tyler O’Neill — the guy with .364/.375/1.000 with four home runs, eight RBIs and a pair of doubles in his last five games — for Wilyer Abreu. Result: Abreu tied the game with a double, before Yoshida had the game-winning single.
You can’t get a full scope of how valuable those moves are without looking across the infield, though. How did Yankees manager Aaron Boone fare?
He lifted Ben Rice for DJ LeMahieu as a defensive replacement in the seventh inning, only to have the latter strike out as the game-tying batter in the ninth. He also called closer Clay Holmes’ name in the eighth, only to watch the man with a 16.20 ERA against the Red Sox this season immediately blow the game.
Cora’s value? He’s continuously made all the right moves, and he’s not Boone.
“It was loud. It was fun. Their fans were here, our fans too,” Cora said postgame, as seen on NESN. “… It felt like the back and forth in the last three innings is what it used to be here. That’s the way it should be. That’s the reason we’re here. That’s one of the reasons we decided to stay here, because we love this, and sometimes I get chills just looking around. There’s a difference between what’s going on here right now compared to early in the season. Early in the season, with all due respect, felt like a museum; the Fenway experience. But now, (the fans) are into it, they like the team and they understand what we’re trying to accomplish.”
AC’s having fun? Boston is, too.
