Alex Cora Discusses ‘Luxury’ Of Managing Red Sox’s Starting Rotation

The long wait officially is over. Baseball is here.

Thursday dawns the beginning of the 2019 Major League Baseball season and Boston Red Sox fans are hoping it’ll be another summer of dominant ball and another deep run come the fall.

If that’s going to happen, Boston’s starting rotation likely will play a major role.

Luckily for Red Sox fans, the rotation is shaping up to be an absolute wagon. The Red Sox have one of the best rotations (manager Alex Cora has even higher praise) in baseball — so expectations are well warranted.

For Cora, he enters 2019 about as confident as a manager could be in his starting pitchers, and described what a “luxury” it is to have a rotation like Boston’s.

“It’s one of the best if not the best, one through five,” Cora said. “We’re thinking about how we’re going to split them up, the lefties, how we’re gonna do that, but it’s cool because our lefties are all different – Sale with the fastball and slider, David with location and that changeup, Eduardo stuff-wise is up there with them. Like they like to say, ‘He’s better than us.’ Then you’ve got Rick, hits his spots and uses his four-seamer. Stuff-wise, Nate is amazing. It’s cool to have them. It’s cool to have them go out there and just put that name beside the P, go out there, go five, six, that’s a good feeling. That’s a good feeling.

“We’re one of the lucky ones around the league,” Cora added. “I hate talking about other teams. But Houston last year, they felt that way. Washington. It’s a luxury. They can be aces in any other rotation. They’re all together. If you’re in a losing streak, it feels like it’ll be stopped that day and a winning streak feels like it’ll continue.”

There’s no doubt that you certainly could do a whole lot worse than Chris Sale, David Price, Rick Porcello, Nathan Eovaldi and Eduardo Rodriguez in the stable. While health always is a concern, Red Sox fans can rest fairly easy knowing the Red Sox can put a quality arm on the mound to start nearly every game.