Red Sox’s Alex Cora Doesn’t Care About Stats, Just Making ‘Routine Plays’

The Boston Red Sox are still in the midst of the American League Wild Card race, but defensive inconsistencies have been the thorn in their side all season long.

NESN analyst Lou Merloni pointed out on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the Red Sox are a Major League Baseball worst in Outs Above Average.

The tweet read:

Outs Above Average (OAA) is the cumulative effect of all individual plays a fielder has been credited or debited with, making it a range-based metric of fielding skill that accounts for the number of plays made and the difficulty of them. Cincy is -19 (29th in MLB) Sox? -51 !!!!!

Since Merloni sent the tweet, the Cincinnati Reds still rank 29th, but their OAA is actually -22, according to Baseball Savant.

Red Sox manager Alex Cora said Monday night’s loss to the Houston Astros was one “sloppiest games in the last few weeks” for Boston, but he doesn’t care about the actual statistic.

“I don’t care about that one,” Cora said prior to Tuesday night’s game at Minute Maid Park, as seen on NESN’s pregame coverage. “Give me the routine plays. … For stretches here, we haven’t made the routine plays.”

Cora acknowledged that shortstop Trevor Story has the range to make the plays and third baseman Rafael Devers has gotten better going to his left to make the play, but the team is still struggling with inconsistencies.

“There’s certain plays that (Rafael Devers’) not making,” Cora said. “For me, it’s not about the ones that you go get, it’s the ones that are right at you, and convert those into outs, and we haven’t done that consistently.”

The Red Sox have committed 87 errors this season, the most in MLB. Since 2018, the Red Sox have committed 458 errors and allowed 303 unearned runs. Cora said the players have been working individually as well as a team in fielding workouts to help get better defensively.

“It’s not lack of trying,” Cora said. “The players, they’ve been busting their ass, trying to get better which is what you appreciate as a manager. It just hasn’t happened and it’s an ongoing process.”