Rich Hill discusses Alex Cora's firing, Red Sox's struggles

Hill: “I did not see this coming."

Photo courtesy of CBS Sports

The Boston Red Sox made the shocking decision to fire manager Alex Cora on Saturday. Along with Cora, five other coaches, hitting coach Pete Fatse, bench coach Ramón Vázquez, third base coach Kyle Hudson, assistant hitting coach Dillon Lawson and major league hitting strategy coach Joe Cronin were also fired. Game planning and run prevention coach Jason Varitek, who was in his 30th year with the organization as a player and coach, was re-assigned to a new role but chose to leave the organization, per MassLive’s Sean McAdam and Chris Cotillo.

21-year MLB veteran Rich Hill had four separate stints with the Red Sox (2010-12, 2015, 2022 and 2024) and is currently doing Red Sox pre and postgame analysis on NESN. He was also teammates with Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow in 2012 and 2015, was managed by Cora in 2022 and 2024 and was signed as a free agent by Breslow in 2024.

Hill is intimately aware of the dynamics at play in Boston, and shared some of his insights with our own Trevor May, his former teammate on the Minnesota Twins and New York Mets, on Tuesday.

“I did not see this coming,” Hill said when asked about his initial reaction to the news.

The Red Sox had a 10-17 record and were in last place in the AL East at the time of Cora’s firing, but Cora had built up a reputation as one of the best managers in baseball and the Red Sox’s issues appeared to stem more from a roster-building standpoint than anything to do with the day-to-day managing of the team.

Entering Saturday, the Red Sox were tied for last in the majors in home runs (15), last in slugging percentage (.335) and last in wRC+ (78). The starting rotation was 27th in ERA (5.31) and 27th in FIP (4.96).

It is difficult to place the entirety of the blame on Cora and his hitting staff for the offensive struggles when Rafael Devers was traded last season and Alex Bregman left in the offseason to sign with the Chicago Cubs.

On the pitching side, The most senior member of the coaching staff who remained in their position was pitching coach Andrew Bailey, who Breslow signed when he took over as chief baseball officer in 2023. The only member of the hitting staff who Breslow retained is John Soteropulos, who has a background with Driveline, the polarizing, data-driven baseball development lab. Driveline’s founder, Kyle Boddy, is also a special advisor with the Red Sox.

“The underlying issue with this is a difference in philosophies,” Hill said. “As things are coming out we’re seeing more of the Driveline philosophy that has been pushed with this administration as opposed to the traditional baseball philosophy with Alex Cora and the group of coaches that were dismissed.”

Hill also expressed concern over Trevor Story and Garrett Whitlock’s reactions to how Breslow and the Red Sox front office communicated the decision to the players on Sunday.

“There just have to be more conversations had,” Story said per MassLive’s Chris Cotillo. “I wouldn’t say it was satisfactory. We’ll have our talk. We haven’t had it yet.”

“If this shows us anything, it’s that we’re here to play baseball. That’s it,” Story continued. “We don’t make decisions. We don’t have any input on that. We’re here to play baseball and our job is to win games. I think that’s the message. We have to find a way to win games.”

“They made it very clear that we get paid to play baseball and we just need to focus on playing baseball,” Whitlock said per Cotillo.

“It’s a lot of ‘shut up and dribble,’” Hill said, referencing when Fox News host Laura Ingraham said that same phrase to LeBron James in 2018 after he spoke out about politics.

Hill also described Whitlock and Story, who he was teammates with in 2022 and 2024, as “extremely level-headed players.”

“These are guys I want to hear from, guys whose opinions I value,” Hill said. “If I’m a free agent and Boston comes calling, there’s already trepidation with players coming into Boston… Now, you’re having free agents who are already going to have something else to question coming into an organization that may not value their veteran presence or value that veteran experience and veteran leadership.”

When discussing working with the Red Sox front office when he was with the organization, Hill compared it to when he was with the Los Angeles Dodgers from 2016-2019.

Hill said that constant communication, productive clubhouse culture and organizational alignment were all present with Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman and Farhan Zaidi, who was the Dodgers general manager during Hill’s tenure with the team.

An example that Hill shared was back in 2017, Zaidi spoke with Hill and other players about how they would like the team to approach the final month of the year. That season, the Dodgers finished with 104 wins, but at one point had a chance to break the regular season win record, set at 116 wins by the 2001 Seattle Mariners and the 1906 Chicago Cubs.

“He asked me, ‘do you guys want to clinch the division early and take a couple of weeks off and get some rest or win 120 games,’” Hill recalled.

One of the final points Hill made was that he believed this would be a valuable learning experience for the Red Sox’s young players, like 22-year-old Roman Anthony, 23-year-old Marcelo Mayer, 23-year-old Payton Tolle and 24-year-old Connelly Early. Hill said it should be “a rude awakening” to them that because of their performance, Cora and the majority of his staff lost their jobs.