In sports, there’s going in the right direction, and then there’s going in whatever direction the Boston Red Sox are going.
Boston entered the 2026 season with high hopes of returning to the postseason for the second consecutive year. The front office seemingly fixed their pitching problems, bringing in Ranger Suarez, Patrick Sandoval and Sonny Gray to support team ace Garrett Crochet.
While Alex Bregman departed in free agency, Roman Anthony, Jarren Duran, Ceddanne Rafaela and Marcelo Mayer formed a good young core around veteran stars like Willson Contreras and Trevor Story. Top prospect Kristian Campbell struggled in 2025, but at just 23-years-old, still offered plenty of upside.
They returned 2018 World Series-winning manager Alex Cora, providing stability as one of the three longest tenured managers with the same team.
TREVOR STORY QUESTIONS RED SOX’S DIRECTION AFTER FIRING MANAGER ALEX CORA, FIVE COACHES: ‘UP IN THE AIR’
Fast forward about six weeks and Boston’s buried in last place, 10 games behind the first place New York Yankees. They’ve been outscored on the season. And Cora and the entire hitting side of the coaching staff is gone. Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow has effectively cleaned house, hoping that a change in leadership would fix some of the team’s problems.
After this past weekend, not only has it not worked, but several players are now publicly disagreeing with each other in the media. The exact opposite of fixing problems.
Willson Contreras, Marcelo Mayer disagree about players taking blame
The Houston Astros came into Fenway on Friday as one of the worst teams in baseball through the early part of the season. Their pitching staff has been decimated by injury, with Hunter Brown, Cristian Javier, and Josh Hader all out with various arm-related problems. Framber Valdez is in Detroit, and replacement Tatsuya Imai looked overwhelmed in his first few starts, before blaming that the adjustment to living and traveling in the US for arm fatigue.
Boston took game one on Friday, but a 6-3 loss on Saturday and 3-1 loss on Sunday were a continuation of the team’s issues. Sunday’s was particularly tough for Red Sox fans to take, as Rafaela had a chance with the bases loaded to tie or win the game in extras, only to ground into a game ending double play.
And in the aftermath, players have started blaming each other. Contreras, according to MassLive, said that it’s “different” without Cora in the dugout.
“It’s different with Alex not here,” he said. “But after Cora got fired, the guys got loose a little more because I feel like the tension was gone…That’s what I felt. That’s my own opinion. When Alex wasn’t in the dugout (anymore), the team was kinda like loose. But that doesn’t matter. We have to play better. We have to find consistency. We have to get better, we have to be better.”
He then got even more specific, calling out the younger players in the lineup for a lack of experience.
It “probably doesn’t help that the lineup has a number of young players who don’t have much experience in dealing with slumps,” he added.
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One of those younger players, Marcelo Mayer, heard those remarks and clearly did not appreciate them.
“To me, that’s just kind of an excuse: blame the young guys,” Mayer said, responding to Contreras’ criticism. “But at the end of the day, we’re all playing baseball, we’re all pros. We all know what we need to do. I don’t think we’re doing a good job with runners in scoring position. When you don’t do that, you don’t score runs.”
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So key players are underperforming. The rotation has been hammered by injuries, with Crochet now out with shoulder inflammation. They fired the manager and much of the coaching staff, and there’s public disagreement between veterans and younger players. Playoff odds have dropped to just 24%, despite being one of the richest and most successful organizations in the sport and playing in one of the league’s largest markets. Exactly what you want to see, a month and a half into the season.
Mayer is right too, to call out the lineup’s struggles with runners in scoring position. Boston has just a .695 OPS collectively in those situations so far this season, which puts them 23rd among the league’s 30 teams. The team’s batting average is .243, while the league-leading Braves are hitting .300 collectively. How much of that is just random variance and small sample size? Red Sox fans better hope that’s most of the explanation, because if not, this early-season swoon and a dysfunctional dugout can quickly end any hope of a postseason run.
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