Although plenty of baseball remains in the 2021 Major League Baseball season, Alex Cora already has positioned himself for individual acclaim.
MLB.com's Anthony Castrovince on Sunday named the Boston Red Sox skipper as the most-likely winner of the American League Manager of the Year Award after 60 games of the campaign. Cora has steered the 37-23 Red Sox to the third-best record in the majors, and they're a season-high 14 games above .500. Those impressive numbers look even better in light of preseason expectations.
"As a rookie manager, Cora finished second in the Manager of the Year vote when the Red Sox won 108 games (and, eventually, the World Series) in 2018 -- a victim of his team living up to expectation, one supposes," Castrovince wrote.
"It's a different story this time around. Cora is back after a year in exile, and a Red Sox team that was generally viewed as all-hit, no-pitch has rallied around him to post the AL's third-best record through Sunday. If we follow the formula that the Manager of the Year honor has to go to the leader of a surprise squad (and, preferably, somebody who hasn't won it recently), then Cora's clearly the guy."
The 60-game mark is especially significant this season because that was the length of the entire regular season in the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign. One need not to be an MLB exert to realize the Red Sox undoubtedly have improved after 60 games in 2021, and Cora plays a huge part in that development.
Castrovince believes the Tampa Bay Rays' Kevin Cash and the Chicago White Sox's Tony La Russa are Cora's chief competition for the AL Manager of the Year Award.
The Red Sox reached the World Series in three of the last four seasons in which they won at least 37 of their first 60 games (1986, 2002, 2007 and 2018), according to a press release the team shared Monday night.
Will Cora have to match or surpass those previous feats to hold off his stiff competition? Time will tell.
