The Boston Red Sox are losers of their last five spring training games, but it doesn’t bother Alex Cora.
The latest loss came by way of an 8-1 thumping from the Tampa Bay Rays. Boston has been outscored by its opponents 40-7 and outhit 70-23 during that stretch, per the Boston Sports Journal’s Sean McAdam. Cora told McAdam his team will get back to work Tuesday to work out the kinks.
“We’ve got different stages in spring training,” Cora said, per McAdam. “We’ll go back to hitting the fundamentals Tuesday and Wednesday on the back fields and we’ll go through a progression. Obviously, you pay attention to effort and there’s been a few plays that you don’t like to see baserunning-wise. Sandy (Leon) almost got picked off in Sarasota (Friday), (Andrew Benintendi) got caught (in between) when they stopped the runner at third base (Saturday) and (Eduardo Nunez) got picked off (Sunday). We can control those.
“The results, I don’t care as long as they’re going through the progression,” he added. “But baserunning stuff, the effort we can control. I think the effort’s been good, but pay attention to details and start playing better.”
It sure sounds like Cora wants to focus on not having sloppy baserunning to ensure runners aren’t getting caught in situations that are easily avoidable.
The Red Sox had a stretch of games last spring when they struggled to win … and look how that regular season season ended.
