Alex Cora spent six months saying almost nothing about why the Red Sox fired him in April. Then he sat down with the “Baseball Isn’t Boring” podcast and said all of it.
Here’s the tweet that set off Red Sox Twitter on Monday:
Why did Alex Cora get fired? He thinks it came down to how the Red Sox pitched in the first month of 2026:
“Honestly, I feel like I got fired because we didn’t pitch in the month of April. As simple as that.”
🎥: @BBisntBoring pic.twitter.com/HLd5GWQZFF
— Tyler Milliken (@tylermilliken_) October 26, 2026
Simple enough. The Red Sox were 10-17 when the team let him go, and a manager doesn’t usually survive a start like that no matter how the roster around him looks. Cora isn’t out here blaming Craig Breslow or a front-office conspiracy. He’s pointing at the rotation and shrugging.
He’s also not pretending he handled the aftermath well. Cora admitted he got “immature” with some of his comments and posts right after getting fired, saying someone should’ve “take[n] the phone away from this kid.” That’s a pretty rare thing for a just-fired manager to say out loud on a podcast, and Boston.com’s writeup treats it as the more interesting story than the firing itself.
Cora’s diagnosis isn’t wrong. It’s just not the whole chart. The Red Sox also ran a bottom-five offense at the time he got canned, a detail the Red Seat Podcast was quick to point out when the quote started circulating. Pitching got him fired. Pitching wasn’t the only problem on that roster.
Boston’s answer for a rotation that just cost a manager his job is circling a free agent: Nick Martinez.
He’s an interesting bet to make. Martinez made his first All-Star team this year with Tampa Bay, then started Game 1 of the World Series for a Rays team that’s turned pitcher reclamation into a house specialty. BoSox Injection floated him as the guy who could replace Sonny Gray. Gray appears likely to walk in free agency, which would leave Brayan Bello as the senior arm in the rotation. Nothing here is signed. Nothing here is close to signed. It’s a front office kicking tires on a free agent, and that’s worth remembering before anybody starts drafting the introductory press conference.
Martinez’s own backstory is the best thing about this whole saga, and ERA has nothing to do with it.
Security walked Nick Martinez out of Yankee Stadium when he was in college.
Practice had been canceled, so he and his roommate went to a Yankees game against the Red Sox early, had too many, got loud, and got removed.
Here is the line he uses about it now.
"Next time I was at… pic.twitter.com/bCFO3ydatU
— the Sports ON Tap (@thesportsontap) October 23, 2026
Security walked him out of Yankee Stadium as a Fordham infielder who’d had a few too many at a Yankees-Red Sox game. Weeks ago he started Game 1 of the World Series for a pitching lab that turns 36-year-olds into All-Stars. That’s a hell of a story. It has nothing to do with whatever’s left in the back of Boston’s rotation.
One All-Star year at 36 is a career year until it’s a track record, and right now it’s a sample size of one. If Martinez is the entire pitching fix for a team whose own manager just said pitching got him fired, that’s thin. The question’s been open since April. Boston’s front office is also dealing with its own instability — repeated executive departures that firebrandal already flagged as a pattern, not bad luck.
Cora got the blame for April. Whoever replaces him inherits whatever Boston’s rotation actually looks like come March.
