Alex Cora Scouts Red Sox Opponents Using This Simple Yet Clever Tactic

A quick memo to Major League Baseball beat writers: If “@ac13alex” starts following you on Twitter, there’s a reason.

That’s the handle of Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora, who apparently uses Twitter as more than just a platform to polish his image. In an interview Sunday with the Boston Herald’s Jason Mastrodonato, Cora admitted he’ll actually follow the beat writers who cover upcoming opponents as a way to glean more information about those teams.

“Now we’re going to Minnesota (for a three-game set with the Twins), so I’ll try to pick a beat writer for the Twins, or somebody that has stats about the Twins, and follow them,” Cora told Mastrodonato. “You never know. There’s a lot of smart people who follow the games and they don’t work for organizations so they can help you out. I try to do that.”

That’s a smart strategy: Beat writers usually are pretty plugged in, and chances are high they have some pretty good insights an opposing team may find useful. The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier, for example, is a seemingly bottomless resource of revealing statistics like this one about Mookie Betts:

If Cora was an opposing manager, he could read this tweet and make a note to consider pulling his starter if Betts was set to face him a third time.

Of course, Cora’s crack Twitter investigating means he has to put up with the platform’s seedier side of trolls and naysayers. But the first-year manager insisted the criticism doesn’t phase him.

“At the end, we’re human beings,” Cora told Mastrodonato. “And although you don’t want to read it, and you know there’s somebody sitting on a couch writing just to write, and crushing you just for the hell of it, you read it.

“But sometimes it hurts, like, holy (expletive). So as soon as I got the job I put filters on and I use social media for information.”

It’s a unique tactic, but it’s working: The Red Sox will begin their three-game series against the Twins on Tuesday with the most wins in baseball.