Alex Cora Gives Surprising Explanation For Red Sox’s League-Worst Issue
The Boston Red Sox made several mistakes during their sloppy 4-1 loss to the New York Yankees on Friday. They had more errors (three) than hits (two) and committed yet another catcher’s interference — their MLB-leading ninth of the season.
For reference, no other team has more than six.
This one happened in the top of the third with Ben Rice at the plate, Aaron Judge on first and two outs. Lucas Giolito’s 1-2 offering to Rice resulted in catcher’s interference by Carlos Narvaez, sending Rice to first and Judge to second.
The mistake proved costly when Cody Bellinger followed with an RBI single, giving the Yankees a 2-0 lead.
After the game, Red Sox manager Alex Cora gave a surprising explanation for all the catcher’s interference calls this year, saying it’s a natural side effect of positioning the catcher closer to home plate in an effort to make framing pitches easier and get better calls from the umpire.
“We’re closer compared to last year. We see the numbers, it works to our advantage,” Cora said. “It’s something that you live with, you understand what we’re trying to accomplish, and numbers-wise, we’re a lot better than last year.”
Boston’s pitching has been considerably better than last year, so Cora may be on to something. After finishing last season with a 4.05 ERA (16th in MLB), the Red Sox have improved to 3.74 (fifth in MLB) this year.
According to Cora, the benefits of being closer to the plate outweigh the costs, as giving up a few extra baserunners over the course of a season doesn’t make much of a difference. Boston did become just the second team in MLB history to lose a game on walk-off catcher’s interference this year, but Cora and the organization apparently think the tradeoff is worthwhile, even when it occasionally backfires.