In June of 1858, Abraham Lincoln warned us that “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Fast forward eight score and seven and a half years later, and he might as well have been talking about the 2026 Boston Red Sox. Given the backdrop, it’s all too fitting that the conflict and internal turmoil within the organization came to a head in abrupt and decisive fashion in the middle of a Border State on Saturday night.
Make no mistake, this was a complete and total purge of Alex Cora and his lead henchmen by Craig Breslow and whoever he has in his corner. But perhaps just as importantly, it’s the quickest conclusion possible to a conflict that threatened to corrode and destroy the 2026 Red Sox season from within.
I’m not here to tell you Alex Cora is the reason behind the team’s 9-17 start, just as Craig Breslow alone is not the reason for the team’s 9-17 start. To me, the No. 1 reason the Red Sox started 9-17 is because Alex Cora and Craig Breslow were constantly at odds with each other — Obsessed with their own personal Game of Thrones that was only going to end when one got the other fired.
As long as this relentless bickering over how the organization was run, who had say over what, and who had sway with the players persisted, the results were going to be subpar. Want to get a group of guys to perform as less than the sum of their parts? Have everybody row in different directions and see what happens.
This is why I’m happy Cora is gone. I didn’t necessarily need it to be him, but I needed it to be one of the two because nothing was getting resolved here until the divorce papers were signed.
Want another clue as to how bad the rift was between Cora and Breslow? This purge happened in April! These two were so incapable of coexisting successfully that Breslow literally took the first opportunity he had to deliver a knockout punch to not just Cora, but all the people closest to him. A total power play to seize the crown!
This is also a good time to stop and say that while Chaim Bloom and Craig Breslow may look, sound, and feel the same at first glance, they’ve proven to be very different people when it comes to this aspect of the game. Craig Breslow revealed over the weekend he’s a stone cold killer when you engage him in backroom chicanery. He learned from the role Alex Cora played in running Bloom out of town and made damn sure he wasn’t next in line. (Although I’ve got news for him: He probably is going to be next in line if he doesn’t pull this plane out of its nosedive fast.)
This also makes me wonder: Is this part of the reason nobody wanted Craig Breslow’s current job? Back in the fall of 2023, when the team had to go through nearly a dozen candidates before settling on Breslow, did people walk out because they didn’t want to engage in this type of behavior to survive? Cora made no secret about eventually wanting to work his way into the front office, and I’d have to imagine that seemed like an enormous threat to anybody who got close to that seat. Perhaps they accidentally set up an interview process destined to find the only person willing to go to the same lengths as Cora when it comes to grabbing power within the organization.
I mean, the optics here are wild. You’ve got one guy making Machiavellian moves to protect himself after creating a talented but flawed roster where the pieces don’t fit together, and another guy posting this on Twitter after being shown the door:
And can I just say, this is one of my least favorite things Alex Cora has ever posted. Happy? Sir, YOU LOST! You were in last place, you were part of a crew that ran the ship around, and you got taken out by the guy we all know you eventually wanted to replace. Nobody who is that happy is sending out “Reply All” emails at 4:00am.
Regardless of how it happened, Craig Breslow now sits atop the mountain. It’s his team, his roster, and his philosophy running the show. I don’t know if it’s the right philosophy (and there’s certainly plenty of reasons to believe it’s not), but I do know it had no chance of working when it was part of a list of competing agendas. At least now, his vision will sink or swim on its own.
And for his sake, it better swim, because Breslow’s made a ton of enemies on his trip to the top and they’re just waiting to get their pound of flesh. The only way to keep them quiet and quell the hit pieces and consequences that are guaranteed to surface soon is to stack so many wins on top of this crime scene, it becomes unrecognizable.
Ultimately, the funniest possible outcome for the Red Sox over the next couple of weeks is for the team to rip off something like a 12-2 stretch on the field while the front office and Alex Cora’s people just unload hit pieces against each other in the media. Now that would be quintessential Red Sox baseball!
