Alex Cora takes ownership after another Red Sox loss: ‘At one point, it has to be on me'

New York Times

4 days ago

BOSTON — Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora usually keeps the same steady tone after wins and after losses. To him, it's necessary throughout a long season not to read too much into one game.
Not Tuesday.
After the team's major-league leading 17th one-run loss this season, a 4-3 defeat to the Los Angeles Angels in 10 innings, Cora didn't hold back his frustration.
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'We keep making the same mistakes, we're not getting better,' Cora said. 'At one point, it has to be on me, I guess, right? I'm the manager. I got to keep pushing them to get better. They're not getting better. They're not. We keep making the same mistakes.
'I'm being very honest about it. Very open about it,' he continued. 'You get frustrated, but at one point it's like, 'OK, what are we going to do? What's going to change?' Because we keep doing the same thing, same thing. We can keep talking about one-run losses, we have what, 17? It's the same thing. Is it effort? Preparation? Attention to detail? I have no idea, man. I watched that game tonight and was like, 'Wow this is real.' It's frustrating.'
The visceral emotion from Cora was rare for the manager in his seventh season at the helm, a manager who just signed a three-year contract extension last summer. But the brutal nature of the way the team has lost so often this season has compounded the frustrations.
The team's defense, which had been better of late, regressed on Tuesday with three errors. It marked their 16th multi-error game of the season and 10th such game at Fenway Park. With 53 errors, they surpassed Colorado for the most in the majors.
Ceddanne Rafaela's wild throw home in the third inning moved runners into scoring position, allowing two extra runs to score. Kristian Campbell botched a grounder later in the game and reliever Zack Kelly couldn't field a ball cleanly off the mound in extra innings.
'What you saw today, routine groundballs for double plays we don't turn, we throw to the wrong bases, we miss cutoff guys, PFPs (pitcher fielding plays) were horrible,' Cora said. 'So there's a lot of bad right now.'
Starter Brayan Bello pitched six innings for the first time since May 2 after a month of awful starts. He allowed three runs, but the offense couldn't bail him out.
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Jarren Duran hit an RBI double in the third and Rafaela's two-run homer in the sixth tied the score 3-3, but there was little else to show from there.
In the 10th, Kelly, who was recalled earlier in the day as reliever Nick Burdi went on the injury list with a foot contusion, was ineffective.
Kelly loaded the bases, and the Angels scored the go-ahead run on a ground-ball double play.
Despite 10 hits on the night, Cora lamented the chances the Red Sox gave the Angels.
'Missed the cutoff guy, they score two, we hit the eighth hitter, we walk the ninth hitter, we didn't execute a bunt play, we didn't advance when we needed to,' the manager said. 'You can talk about chances. I can tell you the chances we gave the opposition. We were lucky to be in that game at the end, to be honest with you.'
The Red Sox now sit at 29-34, their most games below .500 on the season. They're 10 games back of first place in the American League East.
Asked where the team could go from here, a listless Cora didn't have many answers.
'Show up tomorrow. Show up tomorrow, that's all we can do,' he said.