Red Sox Rumors: Boston Fires Two Coaches After 2023 Season

Alex Cora’s Red Sox coaching staff will look different in the 2024 Major League Baseball season.

Boston on Monday fired pitching coach Dave Bush and third base coach/infield instructor Carlos Febles, as first reported by The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier and confirmed by MassLive’s Chris Cotillo.

The reported departure of Bush comes after the Red Sox ended the season with a 4.52 team ERA, the 10th-worst mark in all of baseball. Bush, who took over as Boston’s pitching coach in October 2019, oversaw a starting pitching rotation that struggled mightly in 2023. Red Sox starters combined for a 4.68 ERA — 22nd in the big leagues — and logged the fourth-fewest innings in the majors.

As for Febles, Boston’s “defensive collapse” contributed to his reported exit, per Speier. As pointed out by The Globe scribe, the club ranked dead last in MLB in outs above average and runs allowed. The 47-year-old had been with the Red Sox organization since 2007, serving time in Lowell, Lancaster, Salem, Greenville and Portland before he was named Boston’s third base coach in November 2017.

The reported firings of Bush and Febles came exactly one week after Cora stressed the need for Red Sox coaching to improve. Boston will try to make that improvement through Bush’s and Febles’ backfills, which will be on the to-do list for whoever replaces Chaim Bloom as the head of the team’s baseball operations.