Alex Cora made a decision to switch up the Boston Red Sox’s lineup entering a series with the Toronto Blue Jays, and the offense made him look pretty good for it.
How many baserunners the Red Sox have stranded this year hasn’t stirred up a lot of concern considering the team’s record, but after dropping three straight series that sandwiched the All-Star break, the manager wanted to make some changes.
The tweaks — most notably, the rearrangement of Xander Bogaerts, Rafael Devers and J.D. Martinez, with Jarren Duran moved before them and Alex Verdugo moved down after — resulted in a 13-4 win over the division rival.
“I just don’t throw pasta to the wall to see if it’s cooked. I don’t do that. There’s a thought process, I called a lot of people, get information,” Cora said over Zoom, referring to what went into the decision to move players around.
“Like I told you guys, it felt like since we went to the West Coast we haven’t hit, we haven’t been close offensively to who we are. There was a lot of traffic in Anaheim, the crazy games in Oakland, against Philly we had traffic, but it just felt like we were stuck a little bit,” Cora said. “It’s not about Alex or Jarren. Actually, the big lineup change is the rearrangement of Xander, Raffy, and J.D. I’ve been thinking this for a while because I do believe we can maximize J.D. You look at the numbers.”
Boston liked what it saw Monday night, enough to roll out the same lineup Tuesday against the Blue Jays.
It seemed to help Duran, who blasted his first career home run, and Verdugo, who worked three walks. Cora still is eager to see what Martinez can do with teammates Bogaerts and Devers (who also have above a .900 OPS) batting in front of him.
“Our fifth spot has more RBI opportunities than our third spot,” Cora said. “This is something I always battle with J.D., him hitting third. … In this case, with the way Xander and Raffy are getting on base and also Enrique (Hernández) the last month, I was like, ‘you know what? ‘Let’s put all of these guys in front of and he’ll get a lot of at-bats with men in scoring position.’ He’s been our best hitter with men in scoring position. He’s been a force for the last five or six years driving in runs, so why not?”
Right now, the Red Sox are stranding 6.52 runners per game, which ranks No. 10 in Major League Baseball. It only looks bad when they’re struggling to score runs as they did before the lineup shuffle.
But so far, so good with Cora’s well thought out plan. It may not be as simple as throwing pasta to the wall to see if it will stick, but Cora knows his team, and apparently only needs the pasta to be al dente. Because the decision didn’t take very long to cook up in his head, he revealed.
“It happened in the fifth inning, to be honest with you, on Sunday,” Cora said. “I start writing it down and looking around and then I made a few phone calls and just, you know, decided to go with it.”
