HOUSTON — Manager Alex Cora made a promise to umpire Junior Valentine before the first game of the Red Sox and Astros series on Monday.
“He’s thrown me out probably two or three times,” Cora said. “I said, ‘Junior, I’m not gonna get thrown out. I promise you. My kids are watching the game and they hate it.’ So then I got thrown out today.”
Cora received his 22nd career ejection as a manager, including his fifth this season, during the seventh inning of Boston’s 4-1 series finale loss to Houston at Daikin Park.
“I hate getting thrown out,” Cora said. “My job is to be in the dugout and help this team to win games from the dugout. This whole thing about rallying the troops and all that getting thrown out, that’s (expletive). My job is to be in the dugout. That’s something (then president of baseball operations) Dave Dombrowski taught me in ’18. And I try to stay there as much as possible.”
Valentine, who was working second base Wednesday, wasn’t the one who tossed Cora. Home plate umpire Ryan Blakney gave him the hook.
Cora already had left the dugout during the top of the sixth inning to speak with the umpire crew. At that point, a potential balk by Astros starting pitcher Hunter Brown was in question. It happened with Jarren Duran at third base and Houston leading 2-1.
“First of all, they got it right,” Cora said. “They got the call right. The only thing for me is like we’ve seen that situation before: that guys have a regular windup and they (the umpires) ask the guys (the pitchers) to declare. You don’t have to declare if you have a regular windup. It’s only if you have a hybrid windup. That’s when you have to declare because that way you’re not deceiving the runner. But throughout the last two years, we’ve seen situations that it’s a regular windup and they have asked the pitcher to declare. That was the only thing.”
Brown had already balked earlier in the sixth inning, sending Duran from first base to second.
The Red Sox failed to tie the game in the sixth, then starter Walker Buehler allowed a two-run home run to Yainer Diaz in the bottom half of the inning, making it 4-1 Astros.
Cora then got ejected during a pitching change in the top of the seventh inning.
“I went out there (in the seventh) just to educate myself to be honest with you,” Cora said. “That’s what I told him. I want to learn, I want to know. I don’t know if he took it that I was being sarcastic. I wasn’t. And then I was walking back (to the dugout) and he threw me out.”
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