BALTIMORE – Roman Anthony doesn’t need to worry about spinning a shocking firing into a positive, nor workshop any crisis PR beyond his own words. He doesn’t have to swallow the more than $10 million the Boston Red Sox owe the dismissed Alex Cora, nor fret about his own job if this doesn’t work out.
“We get to play baseball today,” Anthony said Sunday, returning to the lineup after a four-game absence with a back malady.
“We can either harp on it and be sad and feel sorry for ourselves and feel sorry for people around us — which I think is a normal reaction. But at the same time? We gotta go.”
And so they went.
Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora walks to the pitcher's mound during the fifth inning against the New York Yankees at Fenway Park on April 22.
The Red Sox rang in the Chad Tracy era — which may be measured in weeks and months — with a 5-3 victory over the Baltimore Orioles, ensuring a series victory in which one win closed out Cora’s ledger and the other began Tracy’s.
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It was the first of 135 remaining games, a number tossed around liberally throughout the organization on a day of reckoning Sunday, aiming to distract from the 27 listless games that marked the stunning end of the Cora era.
They’re still mired in last place in the American League East, but it’s still too early to call them cooked, which seemed to be the main justification from chief baseball officer Craig Breslow for Cora’s firing.
How might the Red Sox move on from one of the most respected managers of the game?
Boston Red Sox Interim Manager Chad Tracy looks on before a game against the Baltimore Orioles at Oriole Park at Camden Yards on Sunday.
Who is Chad Tracy?
The 45-year-old Tracy (not that Chad Tracy) managed his big league debut without a bench coach, and no, he’s not considering his 70-year-old father for the role.
Jim Tracy was the National League’s 2009 Manager of the Year for the Colorado Rockies and managed 11 seasons for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Pittsburgh Pirates and Rockies. The younger Tracy, more succinct than his garrulous father, carries a respected voice in the Red Sox organization.
He was in his fifth season as manager of the Red Sox’s Class AAA Worcester club when he was summoned to his office in the fourth inning of their game Saturday, told he was now the interim manager of the big club and began an odyssey to get to Baltimore.
The nerves were there. They dissipated when he saw many of his former Worcester charges in the Red Sox clubhouse, such as slugger Anthony and rookie infielder Marcelo Mayer, along with veterans like Trevor Story and Garrett Whitlock, who spent rehab stints there.
“When I started seeing the players before the bus left (Sunday morning), each player I saw, it just started to calm me more,” says Tracy. “I had great conversations with Whit and Trev, and guys that are leaders on our team. The more conversations I had with them, the more it calmed me.
“I will lean heavily on the relationships I had with the players, which is quite a few of them, because of Worcester.”
Tracy played eight minor league seasons, long enough that he was in the Rockies organization the same time one of his players, shortstop Trevor Story, was coming up. Story and perhaps all the Red Sox will balance empathy for Cora with excitement for Tracy.
“I hate that it comes this way,” says Story. “Because he had a great relationship with AC too. I hate this for AC and it doesn’t seem fair, but also excited for Tracy.”
The club seemed tickled to give Tracy the customary postgame beer — and shaving cream, and other stuff — shower after his first victory. Tracy has the lineup card for posterity.
And he had quite a moment in the seventh inning, when he relieved starter Connelly Early after 6 2/3 excellent innings and saw plenty of familiar faces — Early, Mayer and Connor Wong — at the mound, just in a much bigger venue.
“You walk out and see the fourth deck, the third deck,” Tracy said of Camden Yards. “We’re standing there, I got Marcelo standing there, Connelly there. It was comfortable.”
Can the Red Sox turn the page on Cora?
It is a mostly veteran and fairly mature Red Sox clubhouse, sufficiently so that they are having little difficulty embracing Tracy and realizing the incoming new staffers played no role in Cora’s dismissal.
But still.
“Everyone knows what that staff meant to this team in here,” says ace lefty Garrett Crochet. “From the outside, it’s tough — we’ve been playing terrible. I feel like those guys paid the cost of our crime. That’s the tough part you have to battle internally.
“It caused a lot of us to be introspective and you understand it’s a business, but when it’s a move that big it really opens your eyes. With that being said, though, it felt like yesterday (a 17-1 win in Cora’s last game) we were getting back on the right page.
“I’m very appreciative of everything the staff was able to instill in us and me, and I owe a lot to them in terms of my own personal growth and the growth of the team last year.”
Crochet and others referenced the sort of guilt the players may feel going forward — almost every piece of the roster, save for stalwarts like outfielder Wilyer Abreu and closer Aroldis Chapman — have performed below expectations. Cora got fired because they were 10-17, and better performance might have prevented the whole affair.
“I consider myself a leader of this team and there were a lot of times I had to reverse momentum or keep momentum going and I let the team down,” says Crochet, who carried a 7.88 ERA into his April 25 start before throwing six shutout innings. “And ultimately I blame myself a lot for where we’re at this year.
“Even though it’s only throwing every five days, it’s a statement thing. When I go out there and pitch well, I think it allows the rest of the guys to do their thing and keep the cog churning.”
Early lowered his ERA to 2.84 with his four-hit, two-run outing; he’s far from the biggest culprit in the firing, but still had his first major league manager on his mind.
“I think we played the way AC wanted us to play,” he said. “It’s good to pitch for Chad. Cool to see those (new staffers) up here.
“But. It’s tough.”
Reality checks usually are.
“It's a ruthless business. It's a kids' game played by adults and ran by adults, and sometimes that gets lost,” says Story. “They're some of the best coaches in the world, and they care more than anybody, and ... just felt like they didn't get a fair shot at it.”
Perhaps it’s just a 24- to 48-hour process. Or maybe it starts anew when the Red Sox return to Fenway Park after a three-game series at Toronto.
Either way, they’re still wedged into some kind of in-between universe.
“A day like today, there’s some grieving going on,” says Crochet. “But Tracy’s our brother now. We definitely want to celebrate his success.”
Will Red Sox hitters reverse their woes?
They’re betting that the dismissal of hitting coach Pete Fatse and assistant hitting coach Dillon Lawson will have some effect. But Cora couldn’t hit for those guys, and neither could the coaches, nor can Tracy.
If there’s a key guy marking the difference between the 89-win wild card Red Sox of 2026 and this now 11-17 version, it might be Story. He overcame a handful of injury-plagued seasons to smack 25 home runs with a .766 OPS last season.
This year? He’s at .198/.235/.297. Story figuring it out would make Tracy look a lot smarter.
That’s just the start of it, though. Jarren Duran (.189, .533 OPS), Caleb Durbin (.169, .530 OPS) and Anthony (one homer, five extra-base hits in 80 at-bats) are largely stifling the offense.
