Red Sox’s Alex Cora Explains Short Leash For Brayan Bello

It hasn’t exactly been a banner week for Red Sox manager Alex Cora, who has been criticized for his bullpen usage throughout Boston’s series against the Houston Astros.

It seemed like Cora had opposite plans with equally poor results in the first two games of the series, leaving Kyle Barraclough to get pummeled on Monday and pulling Brayan Bello fairly early Tuesday.

The decisions made by Cora were influenced by the availability of his bullpen, with the Red Sox skipper explaining there was one main reason for the decision to pull Bello in Tuesday’s loss at Fenway Park.

“The guy at the plate,” Cora said, as seen on NESN’s coverage of the 2023 WEEI/NESN Jimmy Fund Radio-Telethon. “We had a full bullpen yesterday, so we had Joe (Jacques) for (Yordan) Alvarez in that spot and he did the job. We didn’t do the job after that, we didn’t catch the ball and they scored.

“There’s certain games where we’ll let (Bello) go, but in that one where we were and knowing who we had — yeah. We got the job done, we turned the page. Maybe in another situation, with another score, we let him go.”

Bello finished the outing with 82 pitches thrown in 4 2/3 innings. He gave up a total of two earned runs on four hits. Bello was fine, but as the Red Sox head into the final month of the regular season, it seems like Cora knows he has to protect his pitchers.

“It’s kind of like Chris (Sale) two days ago,” Cora said. “If Chris was at full force, he’ll get that righty to try and get him out, but 90 pitches, a lot of effort, coming back from injury. … (Bello) gets an extra day for his next (start) so he should be fine.”

The Red Sox will look to salvage a win against the Astros in the series finale on Wednesday from Fenway Park. First pitch is scheduled for 4:10 p.m. ET, and you can watch the full contest here.