Report: Red Sox have been in contact with Alex Cora during manager search

Former Houston Astros manager A.J. Hinch landed a new job on Friday with his year-long suspension over, and Alex Cora may be headed down a similar path.

The Boston Red Sox are searching for a new manager after firing Ron Roenicke, and there has been speculation they could bring back Cora. On Friday, Alex Speier of the Boston Globe reported that the Red Sox have been in contact with Cora on more than one occasion since his suspension officially ended on Tuesday night.

It would stand to reason that any conversations the Red Sox have with Cora are about more than just checking in to see how he’s doing. Chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom has not ruled out including Cora as part of the team’s search for a manager, and a recent report claimed Cora still has the support of Boston’s ownership group.

The Red Sox have interviewed several candidates including Minnesota Twins bench coach Mike Bell, Pittsburgh Pirates bench coach Don Kelly, New York Yankees bench coach Carlos Mendoza, Arizona Diamondbacks bench coach Luis Ureata, and Chicago Cubs third base coach Will Venable. Speier said some of those candidates have been informed they are out of the running while others will get another interview.

Cora was painted as one of the masterminds behind the Houston Astros’ cheating scandal. He was a bench coach with Houston at the time, but the Red Sox were also accused of committing violations while Cora was manager. Those violations were much less severe and Cora was found to be not involved.

As far as Major League Baseball is concerned, everything Cora did wrong came before he was hired as manager of the Red Sox. Cora won the World Series with Boston in his first year on the job in 2018, and players stood by him after news of the Astros scandal blew up. Now that Hinch has landed a job as manager of the Detroit Tigers, it would not be a surprise if the Red Sox bring Cora back.