Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora has been executing a season-long game plan regarding the pitching staff, set to evolve over time.
It turns out there was a long-term plan to the Red Sox manager’s quick hooks early in the season. Cora was known to pull his starter after the second time through the order seemingly regardless of the result, and would only allow pitchers to go deeper when the bullpen was completely taxed — as was the case in Nick Pivetta and Nathan Eovaldi’s complete-game efforts.
While fans worried that analytics were ruining the game and that starting pitchers would become glorified openers, Cora was just preparing for a full 162-game season with postseason aspirations.
“I know we get criticized sometimes with our pitching program early on in the season,” Cora said, as seen on NESN’s postgame coverage. “Taking care of pitchers and taking them out early, but like we tell them, the reason we do that is to save bullets and to be ready when it really matters.
“That’s why we can be creative in October and in September using starters as relievers and just being disciplined early on is paying off right now.”
The Red Sox skipper’s frequent explanation of predetermined “pockets” of scheduled pitching changes to produce favorable matchups puts his ability to lead with his gut over numbers in question.
On Monday, Cora put down the stats and rode Wacha to a 1-0 complete-game effort. All of a sudden, the Red Sox have the most pitchers in the league with complete games.
With the Red Sox peaking above .500 and riding a five-game win streak, Cora can start to manage with a little more aggressiveness moving forward.
The Red Sox continue their hot stretch with Garrett Whitlock on the mound for the second game of their four-game series on Tuesday against the Angels. First pitch is scheduled for 9:38 p.m. ET following an hour of pregame coverage, and you can watch it all on NESN.
