It appears the Boston Red Sox are replacing Alex Cora with the former manager’s righthand man.
The Red Sox are expected to announce Ron Roenicke as their new manager upon the conclusion of Major League Baseball’s investigation of sign-stealing allegations stemming from the 2018 season, The Boston Globe’s Peter Abraham reported Friday. USA Today also reported Roenicke is getting the job.
Roenicke is an unsurprising selection, assuming he somehow isn’t implicated in MLB’s investigation. The 63-year-old has managed in the big leagues, serving as skipper for the Milwaukee Brewers for four-plus seasons between 2011 and 2015. His best year in Milwaukee was his first when the Brewers won 96 games before eventually falling in the National League Championship Series. Milwaukee fired Roenicke early during his fifth season at the helm, and he finished his Brewers run with a .508 winning percentage.
The Red Sox hired Roenicke as bench coach prior to the 2018 season, and he worked alongside Cora for two years, including that record-setting 2018 campaign when Boston won 108 regular-season games on the way to capturing a World Series title.
Boston mutually parted ways with Cora in January after he was singled out in commissioner Rob Manfred’s finding of a separate sign-stealing investigation into the 2017 Houston Astros when Cora was the club’s bench coach. Cora, Manfred concluded in his report, was the mastermind of the scheme that led to Houston firing manager AJ Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow.
Roenicke will have to hit the ground running. Red Sox pitchers and catchers will report to spring training on Feb. 12. The team also is about to embark on a potentially bumpy transitional period after reportedly agreeing to trade Mookie Betts and David Price to the Los Angeles Dodgers as part of a three-team blockbuster trade. That deal is held up at the moment after the Red Sox reportedly balked at the medical information with one of the players in the return, but it’s expected a deal still gets done at some point.
UPDATE (12:10 p.m. ET): The Red Sox’s official word is the search is not yet completed, according to MassLive’s Chris Cotillo.
From the Red Sox: “Our managerial search is not yet completed. We will comment at the completion of the search.”
— Chris Cotillo (@ChrisCotillo) February 7, 2020
