The Philadelphia Phillies have been down bad lately. A near-historic collapse during the final week of the regular season had fans feeling anxious, and yet another first-round playoff faceplant did nothing to assuage those feelings. Now, in the first disappointment of the offseason, the team’s top choice for the vacant manager role, Alex Cora, declined to skipper the Phils in 2027. However, that should be greeted by fans as a relief instead of a heartbreak.
Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski made clear that his first choice for his club's new manager was Alex Cora. The duo spent the 2018 and 2019 seasons together with the Boston Red Sox, taking home a championship in their first year together. The Sox fired Dombrowski in September of 2019, but it seems he still carries a torch for his old skipper.
Back in April of this year when Dombrowski made Phillies manager Rob Thomson walk the plank, he was asked about a potential Cora reunion during his post-firing press conference. The longtime executive made no bones about the fact that he wanted Cora from the start, but was rebuffed in favor of spending time with family.
He went on to pile compliments onto Cora, stating, “I think Alex Cora is one of the finest managers in the game of baseball. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with Hall of Fame managers like Tony La Russa and Jim Leyland… I think if Alex Cora decides to keep managing, he has a chance to be in that same category, that’s how good he is.” If that’s the case, no wonder he wanted Cora so desperately.
Not only is Alex Cora a cheater, he's also not a very good manager
And yet, Phillies fans should be asking themselves if Dombrowski's train of compliments was really warranted. After all, Cora doesn’t have the most flattering reputation around the sport. Back in 2017 he served as bench coach for the World Series champion Houston Astros under skipper A.J. Hinch. While that certainly helped launch Cora to a managerial gig of his own, it came with a price.
The 2017 Astros became one of the most famous groups of pariahs in baseball history after they were exposed for a sign-stealing scandal in 2020. In short, they used video technology to gain an unfair advantage over other teams’ pitchers, and went to great lengths to keep their scheme going throughout the season. Cora was not just part of the organization when this happened, he was one of the ringleaders.
One year later when he was piloting a team of his own, Cora implemented a similar technology-based sign-stealing scheme in Boston, leading to a 108-win regular season and a World Series victory. Cora has certainly gotten results, but at the cost of the integrity of the entire sport.
The fallout from the 2017 Astros scandal led to Cora (along with Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow) receiving a one-year ban from Major League Baseball. After sitting out the 2020 season, Cora was welcomed back to the Red Sox with open arms. However, he failed to replicate the results he had previously gotten with less scrupulous means.
From 2021 through his firing in late-April of 2026, Cora steered the Sox to a 428-409 record, good for a roughly 51 percent winning percentage. To put it into perspective, that would yield between 82 and 83 wins over a 162-game season. So it appears that without the aide of underhanded tactics, Cora was a completely mediocre manager. Considering the dire state of the Phillies’ aging core, limping to an 83-win season in 2027 would have fans ready to burn down Citizens Bank Park.
Luckily, the possibility of a Cora-led Phillies team was taken off the table on Tuesday night when he informed the team that he will not be managing in 2027. It makes sense, considering he’ll still be making $7.25 million in the last year of his Red Sox contract. Why not use some of that cash to go on an African safari instead of taking part in a 162-game grind?
Phillies fans should be elated that Dombrowski’s Cora gambit didn’t work. First, because there’s a real possibility he would have continued the team’s descent into irrelevance. Second, and more importantly, fans ought not to be put in the uncomfortable position of having to choose between lifelong love of a team and the questionable morality of the man leading them.
It costs a lot of time, money and emotional capital to follow a baseball team for six months. Phillies fans deserve better men to root for than perhaps the biggest baseball villain of the last century.
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