Last weekend, the Sox reached a different conclusion after a 9-17 start, firing Cora, bench coach Ramón Vázquez, game planning and run prevention coach Jason Varitek, third base coach Kyle Hudson, and three members of the hitting group: hitting coach Pete Fatse, assistant hitting coach Dillon Lawson, and hitting strategy coach Joe Cronin.
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The magnitude of the decision leaves a giant “why?” in its wake, particularly given the lack of specifics offered by chief baseball officer Craig Breslow and CEO/president Sam Kennedy at the press conference following their decision.
Desperation for a turnaround is the obvious place to begin.
The Sox front office believed and believes the team has a playoff-caliber roster that has underperformed. When the team got off to a 2-8 start, Breslow preached patience and shrugged off the idea of a coaching staff change in the face of a slow start, with reason. Last year, 11 of the 12 playoff teams endured at least one 2-8 stretch.
A 26-game, 9-17 crater seemed different. There have been 250 playoff teams since 2000. Of those, just two ― the 2024 Astros (7-19) and 2001 A’s (8-18) ― got off to starts as bad as the 2026 Red Sox. Of last year’s 12 playoff teams, just three endured a stretch as bad as the Sox’ 9-17 run. Time for a turnaround was running out.
Still, there are teams that have corrected course without personnel changes. Breslow opted for disruption (and, in the eyes of some in the industry, an act of self-preservation that shifted focus away from roster construction) rather than trusting the manager and members of the coaching staff with whom he’d entered the season.
Breslow’s choice reflected multiple factors. Among them: The sort of personality conflict between Breslow and Cora that tends to grow and become more difficult to navigate in times of organizational stress.
While there were no known blow-ups between the two preceding Cora’s firing, and both recognized strengths in each other, a word cloud of sources familiar with the dynamic between the two leaders yielded terms such as “misaligned” and “fractured,” with personalities described as “very different” in a way that ― despite a shared priority of the team’s success ― created tension on multiple issues.
Perhaps the most prominent source of friction was the coaching staff, particularly the training processes employed in support of improvement and development at the big league level. Multiple sources confirmed reporting by The Athletic that Breslow’s concern about the coaching staff ― and tension with Cora about it ― dated at least to last season.
Pete Fatse was Red Sox hitting coach from 2022 to 2026.Jim Davis/Globe Staff
In recent years, the Red Sox have overhauled their training and development processes throughout the minors, with a significant infusion of employees either from Driveline, a baseball training organization, or versed in its training methods. At the heart of the processes the Sox sought: The collection and use of information and player tracking in both games and training to help players improve. Are players working on the right things, and in the right way, to get better?
The overhaul started in the minors during former chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom’s tenure. But Breslow made systematized development at the major league level a significant part of his mission when he was hired as Bloom’s replacement after the 2023 season.
That effort began with the team’s pitchers. Breslow immediately hired pitching coach Andrew Bailey and director of pitching Justin Willard as part of a major overhaul of the organization’s pitching infrastructure. The pitching group established player tracking protocols as well as structured player goals that are fairly consistent from the minors to the big leagues.
Breslow retained the entire 2023 hitting group ― Fatse as well as assistant hitting coaches Luis Ortiz and Ben Rosenthal ― for the 2024 season. Fatse and Rosenthal remained in 2025, joined by assistant coach Dillon Lawson, who was promoted from his 2024 position as a minor league hitting coordinator.
At times, there were questions in the front office about whether the structure and tracking of training and goal-setting was as consistent among the position players ― and especially the hitting group ― as it was with the pitchers, and whether the group was too focused on subjective factors such as feel as opposed to objective training goals.
Kyle Boddy is the founder of Driveline Baseball.Jason Redmond for The Boston Globe
According to league sources, Breslow contemplated significant changes to the coaching staff and especially the hitting group (including Fatse ― beloved by players: “Top, top hitting mind and work ethic in the hitting world,” said one) both during and after the 2025 season. According to those sources, when Breslow raised the idea of staff change to Cora, the manager made his feelings clear: If Breslow wanted to do so, he’d have to fire Cora.
In those two instances, Breslow deferred. Aside from Rosenthal being replaced by John Soteropulos (a former Driveline coach who’d been a Sox minor league hitting coordinator in recent years), nearly all of the 2025 coaching staff was brought back for 2026 ― and, according to sources, showed more of an embrace of the sort of training and tracking methods favored by Breslow this spring and into the start of the season.
Even so, that evidently wasn’t enough to prevent a purge when the 2026 season devolved. Breslow opted for sweeping change. Notably, despite significant struggles by a pitching group that had been expected to lead the Sox, Breslow didn’t make changes to his group of pitching coaches.
“We have fallen short in terms of the performance across hitting, pitching, defense, and base running,” said Breslow. “But as far as it relates to the staff and [figuring out] exactly what’s driving that, we have confidence in the pitching group’s ability to turn that around.”
He did not make the same claim, of course, about the hitting group ― indirectly offering evidence of one of the fissures in his working relationship with Cora.
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Alex Speier can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @alexspeier.
