When dealing with the media, former Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora showed honesty and accountability — even if that meant criticizing his players, which he sometimes did to motivate them.
Interim manager Ron Roenicke won’t be using that same strategy in the upcoming season.
“Alex is probably more open with you guys than I will be,” Roenicke told MassLive’s Chris Smith on Sunday. “It’s just his personality because he’s younger. He’s closer to these guys (the players). I think he can be more critical in the press than I can probably be. So I’m really not critical in the press.”
Roenicke was the bench coach in Boston the past two seasons, but reflected on how he handled media interactions during his four years as manager of the Milwaukee Brewers.
He tried his best to ensure he didn’t say anything that would be interpreted the wrong way by his players, and had his PR staff go through interview clips to double-check that he didn’t need to sit any one of them down and explain himself.
“I don’t want to have any negative thoughts on things,” Roenicke said. “And the more I stay away from it, the easier it is for me. Because if you start picking apart every single thing — you guys have a job to do. And your job is to tell it like you see it. Like it is. That’s not my job. My job really is to get the most out of the players. That’s my job. How do I get the most out of my players? And if I get the most out of them, we’re going to win. So it doesn’t entail anything really beyond that. So that’s why I don’t want to look at stuff so critically: because that’s your job to write that.”
Roenicke will focus on positivity heading into the 2020 season.
