Mazz: Are Alex Cora and the Red Sox headed for a split?

For now, these are the facts: Alex Cora is entering the final year of his contract. No extension has been announced. And given some of the reporting out there, it's fair to wonder whether Cora and the Red Sox are headed for a split.

In case you missed it, longtime baseball reporter Bob Nightengale tweet about Cora over the weekend - or maybe we should say that Nightengale tweeted about Cora's future. Near the conclusion of a week that began with baseball annual winter meetings and ended with the historic signing of Shohei Ohtani with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Nightengale reported the following about Cora's (lame-duck?) status as manager of the Red Sox.

Now, could this all be nothing? Well, sure. But let's consider the facts and consequences.

First, again, Cora's contract is up at the end of the season. Second, the Red Sox just changed chief baseball executives after the arranged marriage of Cora and Chaim Bloom failed. (Current chief baseball officer Craig Breslow is the third chief executive with whom Cora has worked.)  Third, the Red Sox have historically extended or terminated managers before the final year of that manager's contract, which means Cora is currently in uncharted territory.

Now the obvious question: could Cora be leveraging the Red Sox merely to get a higher salary? Sure, but that also suggests that the sides currently are not on the same page with regard to his compensation. If he were happy in Boston and the sides were communicating well, why would he be publicly leveraging the Red Sox at all? Isn't it far more likely that the Sox and Cora have merely agreed to play out the season and assess whether they are still compatible depending on how things develop on the field - and on whether Cora and Breslow are similarly compatible?

This much we know: Cora and Bloom aware hardly aligned philosophically; Cora wants to win and Bloom was far more interested in the minor league system. They were a bad match. Cora has expressed tremendous gratitude to the Red Sox for rehiring him after he was suspended as a result of the Houston Astros cheating scandal, but those debts will have been paid in full by the end of the season, when both the Red Sox and Cora will have honored their contract. During those years, with the exception of 2021, the Red Sox have twice finished last and, more importantly, dropped in overall payroll ranking from the top few spenders in Major League Baseball to the middle of the pack.

Now, with Cora still under contract, Nightengale is reporting that other teams are already expressing their interest in Cora and that he could end up with the biggest managerial contract in history ... which can only happen if he hits the open market. That only fuels the speculation that the Red Sox and Cora are merely staying together for the children, so to speak, but that they are headed for Splitsville once the kids have grown.

And by the end of the 2024, the house will be an empty nest.

The Boston Red Sox are in the mist of another down season. On Monday's Felger and Mazz, the guys made the point that the Boston Red Sox have become a second rate operation. After losing two out of the first three games in the series against the Tampa Bay Rays, the Red Sox's indeficiencies when it comes to roster building has been highlighted. The guys discuss how the Red Sox are the fourth most popular team in the city and that it isn't even a debate.

Mazz: Is this what they want?

Jim Murray:  You weren't excited by the Rob Refsnyder extension over the weekend and them holding a press conference for that announcement as well on Saturday?

Mazz: I mean, this is a joke.

Jim Murray: It really is.

Mazz: The Red Sox are a joke. They are a joke, is what they are, an absolute punchline of an organization. That's what they are, that's what they've become. Whether they want to admit it or not. So if they're modeling themselves after the Tampa Bay Rays, who are good at it and actually win games. Well, you're trying to do it their way and you suck at it. And tell me when they're going to be first rate again. Because I think some of the crap that's going on at the ballpark, too, which doesn't have anything to do per se with the team on the field, is also being done in a Mickey Mouse fashion.

Jim Murray: Such as?

Mazz: Dining. It's a joke. Okay we're in the year 2023 here, Bill Belichick does a postgame press conference, the Patriots put it on their website, and their fans can go and access it. You can listen to the whole thing. Bills get a mike in front of them. Sometimes he pushes it away because that's Bill. But it's there.

Felger: They've paid for the mic and the feed.

Mazz: Okay, here is the beginning of Cora's post-game yesterday again, go ahead Jimmy.

Alex Cora: Let's end up with times.

Mazz: Stop. Get the picture. These are the Boston Red Sox. Okay. This isn't the freaking, you know, Sacramento Kings. Okay. It's the Red Sox who play in a stadium that might as well be, you know, just a museum where people come in and buy tickets because they show up even when you don't play. And meanwhile, they're trying to sell you the future in Triston Casas comes up and blows. So there's that, too. Like, there is nothing to grab on to. Nothing. Zero. They're hollow. I don't know what happened there. I really don't. I don't know what happened. I don't know what trigger led them down this road. Where they want to be this. I think the whole thing is second rate. The Red Sox are a second rate operation.

Felger: So their game yesterday was at whatever, 2:00, it was an afternoon game, whatever, one, two, three was in the afternoon up against nothing, like golf. And I don't know what else.

Jim Murray: No, that's about it.

Mazz: What did they do? I didn't even look.

Felger: In the demo. The male demo? Men, 25-54. Like living, breathing people. 0.60. Among adults. 0.43 include the gals 0.4. Well, I mean, again, that's, that's scary.

Mazz: Yeah. No, again, they're nonexistent. I mean, like, you know, we have this discussion periodically, you know, what are the top four teams in town? They're four, not even close. The Revs are climbing up their ass right now.

Felger: Well if they put the Revs on TV they might do those kind of numbers.

Mazz: Yes!.

Felger: As opposed to the web.

Mazz: They're nonexistent. They're a zero. They are a zero.

Felger: I mean why would you watch? You don't know who any of the players are.

Mazz: Right. And even the young ones aren't doing that well.