Alex Cora Turned Down Phillies, but Another Team Might Try to Land Him originally appeared on NESN. Add NESN as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
With the Philadelphia Phillies announcing on Wednesday that they've officially hired Don Mattingly as their full-time skipper and gave him a two-year contract, it all but confirms reports that Alex Cora doesn't want to manage this season.
Most reports suggest Cora plans to take a year off and then return to coaching. While it remains uncertain what the former Boston Red Sox skipper could do over the next year or so, he was recently floated as an option for the Houston Astros job.
The Astros let Joe Espada go Wednesday morning, a decision that didn't come as a surprise.
As for what that could mean for Cora, some believe Houston could bring him out of retirement to manage a team with a chance to win a World Series if the right things happen during the offseason.
“Cora reportedly has decided he'd like to take a full year off to spend time with his family instead of getting right back into managing, but would a call from the Astros change those thoughts and would Jim Crane actually go here? Probably not. Cora was the leading candidate to take over the Philadelphia Phillies after their president Dave Dombrowski admitted he tried to hire Cora for the job when he fired Rob Thomson in April.
“Now, it appears he's told the Phillies to look elsewhere. Cora was the Astros' bench coach for one season when they won it all in 2017 before getting his first managerial job with the Red Sox and taking them to the 2018 World Series championship. Of course, a year later, Cora got caught up in the Astros' sign-stealing investigation, which concluded the Red Sox, under Cora, also were using video replay to decipher the opponents' signs in 2018. The Red Sox let go of Cora in January 2020, then Major League Baseball suspended him for a year. Cora was brought back to manage the Red Sox in 2021 where he remained until he was fired after Boston got off to a slow start this season,” Matt Young of the Houston Chronicle wrote.
Perhaps Cora just didn't want to coach in Philadelphia, or the reports indicating that he wants to spend time with family are true.
It's tough to get a clear sense of what he's doing right now, though Houston would be an interesting landing spot for the former Red Sox skipper.