The Boston Red Sox are squarely in the playoff hunt at the halfway point in the MLB season, and manager Alex Cora wants team executives to do their part to keep it that way.
Before Boston’s game against the Toronto Blue Jays was rained out on Wednesday, Cora told reporters he believes the Red Sox can contend for the rest of the season and should operate accordingly. He summed up his thoughts with a three-word message: “Let’s get greedy.”
“I know we’ve been talking about the Wild Card and all that stuff. Let’s get greedy,” Cora said, via WBZ’s Matt Gaegan. “There are teams ahead of us that are not playing good baseball. I know, probably, one of them, it’s only for five days. But there’s more out there. I think this brand of baseball, we can maintain the way we’re playing.
“Let’s not settle for the third Wild Card. Let’s go higher and see where the season takes us.”
Cora also pulled no punches when discussing how the Red Sox treated the trade deadline the past two seasons. He is hoping new chief baseball officer Craig Breslow will take a different approach leading up to July 30.
“Honestly, we didn’t get better,” Cora said the past two trade deadlines. “We just stayed the same and the teams around us got better. I can walk you through the trading deadline the way I see it. There’s three ways you can go: You buy, you sell, you stay put. When you stay put, there’s going to be teams that, they added, and they’re going to be better than you. It’s not that your team was a bad team, but the other ones around you got better.”
The Red Sox entered Thursday tied with the Kansas City Royals for the third American League Wild Card spot. They are a game behind the Minnesota Twins for the second spot. Boston is seven games behind the Baltimore Orioles for the top Wild Card spot and eight games back of the New York Yankees in the AL East. Cora’s team has won eight of its last 10, while the Yankees have lost eight of their last 10.
Cora is in the final year of his contract with the Red Sox, and he recently made some interesting comments about his future. If the team stays put again at the deadline even while in contention, the 48-year-old manager is not going to be happy.
