Trevor Story slashed .119/.119/.214 as the Red Sox's number 2 hitter. That is not a slump. That is a crime scene.
Every time I see someone floating Alex Cora's name as the reason Boston is sitting at 6-10, I want to check the line on who is actually watching these games. The public loves a managerial scapegoat. It is clean, it is simple, and it is almost always wrong. This time it is especially wrong.
The Market Is Mispricing Cora's Culpability
Here is what the tape shows: Cora saw Story destroying the lineup from the 2 spot and moved him to 5 before the Brewers series. That is a manager doing his job. The adjustment worked. Story hit .290/.294/.355 with 10 RBIs after the move, which is still not great but is a different universe from the .119 wasteland he was living in before it.
Meanwhile, Cora's pitching management has kept this team from getting swept into oblivion. When one starter threw 8 shutout innings against Detroit, that did not happen by accident. The rotation has been holding. The bullpen is a mess, yes, but using 7 relievers in a single game and still winning 8-6 is not an indictment of the manager. Ryan Watson blowing a 5-run lead is an indictment of Ryan Watson.
I will give the Cora critics one fair point: the bullpen usage is unsustainable. Seven arms for 6 and a third innings is a pace that will wreck a pitching staff by June. But Cora's hand is forced when his Rule 5 pick is hemorrhaging leads. You cannot manage around a roster hole that big. You can only patch it.
Story Is the Bet That Has Not Paid
The number that keeps me up at night is not the record. It is the 40.5% strikeout rate. Story was offering zero protection to anyone hitting around him, walking nobody, and leading the team with 4 errors at short. That is a player actively making his team worse in 3 separate ways simultaneously.
Compare that to Roman Anthony apparently raking somewhere in the system, and you start to wonder about the roster construction decisions that put Story in this lineup at all. That is a front office question, not a Cora question.
The public money is on Cora because the public always bets the manager when a team underperforms. Sharps know better. Sharps look at the underlying numbers and ask who is actually generating the losses. Story's -18 wRC+ before the lineup change is the sharpest number in this whole conversation. Negative wRC+. He was literally worse than a replacement-level hitter.
Cora is not coaching a championship roster right now. He is coaching a team with a shortstop who could not hit a beach ball in April and a bullpen that needs a babysitter. His response has been to adjust, patch, and keep the losses from getting worse. The Red Sox could easily be 4-12 without those moves.
If Boston is still 6-10 in three weeks and Story is still posting a sub-70 wRC+, then the conversation shifts to why Cora has not escalated further. But right now, blaming the manager for a shortstop's historic cold streak is like blaming the dealer when you drew a 2 on 19. The cards are the cards. Story needs to hit, or someone upstairs needs to make a harder call than moving him one spot down the order.
