NEW YORK — As a rookie manager in October of 2018, Alex Cora seemingly could do no wrong.
Every move he made seemed to be the right one. When he tried a different lineup, it worked. When he inserted starting pitchers into late-inning relief roles, they shone.
Cora’s managerial acumen was a big reason the Red Sox went 11-3 en route to a World Series championship.
Seven years later, in just his second postseason visit since then, he’s already off to a good start.
Cora constructed a lineup for Game 1 of the wild card round that wouldn’t have intimidated many opponents. Facing lefty Max Fried of the New York Yankees, Cora chose to sit lefties Wilyer Abreu and Nathaniel Lowe and instead opted for journeymen Nate Eaton and Nick Sogard, to go along with platoon regulars Romy Gonzalez and Rob Refsnyder.
Before the game, Cora seemed surprised at the reaction to his lineup, noting that he had managed similarly throughout the regular season.
“We’ve been doing this the whole season. We are not going to change,” he said a bit defensively. ” I would love to have nine horses and roll with them. That’s not the case. We have to manage the team. Like I said before, we have a good team. We will mix and match. We will be doing the things we have been doing throughout the season. Let’s see where we are at at the end of the night.”
Where the Red Sox were was in the driver’s seat, having defeated the Yankees 3-1 in Game 1, needing only one win over the next two games to advance to the Division Series.
As the game unfolded, it appeared as though nearly every decision by Cora was somehow validated.
“Whatever he decides, I think everyone in here believes in it,” said Sogard. “And we believe it’s next man up, and whoever is in that day is going to do their thing.”
Sogard, playing second and batting ninth, singled in the third inning and delivered a hustle double in the seventh, leading to the first two Red Sox runs.
Eaton, playing third and batting sixth, hit an end-of-the-bat two-out double to right with two outs, sending Carlos Narvaez to third, though the Red Sox failed to score that inning.
Refsnyder recorded a two-out walk in the fifth. But when Fried was chased in the seventh in favor of righthander Luke Weaver, Cora responded by pinch-hitting Masataka Yoshida for Refsnyder.
The result? A sharp first-pitch single up the middle by Yoshida, delivering two runs and giving the Red Sox their first lead of the night.
And still, Cora’s skilled button-pushing wasn’t through. Even though starter Garrett Crochet had thrown 100 pitches after seven innings of work, he sent Crochet back out for the eighth and got two more huge outs from his starter. His final pitch, a career-high 117th on the night, was clocked at 100.2 mph.
Cora had sensed that Crochet still had plenty left in the tank. Crochet backed his manager’s belief by finishing with a flourish.
“He was throwing 97 mph, 98 mph,” explained Cora. “The previous inning was a quick one. That gave us a chance to push the envelope. In the eighth, it was a quick inning against a pocket that gave him kind of trouble early in the game, (but) I didn’t hesitate. I told (pitching coach Andrew Bailey) ‘He’s going out.’ He did his job.”
For his last move of the evening, Cora went to closer Aroldis Chapman with two outs in the eighth to face Jose Cabellero with a runner on first, and brought him back for the ninth.
It was just the second time all year that the Sox had asked Chapman get more than three outs — the last time was in Philadelphia, shortly after the All-Star break.
Cora at times has bristled when it’s suggested that the 2018 had to be a dominant team to have won 108 games in the regular season before steamrolling the Yankees, Houston Astros and Los Angeles Dodgers as they won a title.
In truth, Cora often platooned at catcher, third base and second base. That Red Sox team had some stars (Xander Bogaerts, Mookie Betts, Chris Sale), but they hardly featured an All-Star at every position.
This postseason, the Sox are already battling a war of attrition. The Sox have been decimated in the rotation, with the latest loss coming Monday when it was revealed that Lucas Giolito (elbow) was almost certainly done for the season.
That injury followed the loss of a half-dozen starters, to say nothing of the continued absence of Roman Anthony, only the team’s most dynamic player when he was felled by an oblique strain in early September.
On Thursday, if necessary, Cora will turn to Connelly Early, who has all of four major league appearances to his credit, in a potential elimination game. The manager will again have to make all the right moves — this week and beyond — if the Red Sox are to enjoy a long October run.
But on Opening Night of the postseason, he got off to a pretty good start.
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