When the Boston Red Sox searched for a new manager last fall, they did not have to look far. The Houston Astros, who had just beaten them in the playoffs, had a bench coach who was just the right fit. Alex Cora was young, bright, charismatic – and he already owned a Red Sox championship ring from 2007, when he was a backup infielder. He got the job.
All season, Cora has affixed a photograph from each Red Sox victory to a wall in his office at Fenway Park. There were 108 in all from the regular season, the most in the history of the team. But to really make his mark in franchise lore, Cora must do what predecessors such as Terry Francona and John Farrell did in their first seasons as Red Sox managers: win the World Series.
“We’re not happy now to stop here,” Dave Dombrowski, Boston’s president of baseball operations, said in the visitors’ clubhouse at Yankee Stadium after the Red Sox won the division series on Tuesday. “We want eight more wins. We have a good club – you wouldn’t win 108 games without one – but we also know that postseason success really, finally, defines how great a club you have.”
The Red Sox have succeeded so far, dumping the New York Yankees in a four-game division series that started, appropriately, with a three-run homer by J.D. Martinez in the first inning of Game 1. Martinez had a spectacular debut season in Boston, hitting .330 with 43 home runs and 130 RBIs. The last Red Sox player to reach all those figures in one season? A fellow named Ted Williams in 1949.
In the Astros, Martinez faces the team that infamously released him in March, 2014, after failing to recognize the changes he had made in his swing. The Astros shrugged off that mistake and built themselves into a juggernaut, winning the World Series last fall and showing off their extraordinary depth in a division series sweep of the Cleveland Indians.
The Astros scored 21 runs and permitted only six, but played all three games in afternoon obscurity. They took the slight personally.
“Does Floyd Mayweather fight the first fight of the night, or is he the main event?” all-star third baseman Alex Bregman told ESPN. “I mean, does Tiger Woods tee off at 8 a.m.? It’s about time the ‘ShowStros’ play on prime-time television.”
They will get their wish in games 1 and 2 at Fenway Park in the first league-championship series to feature two teams with at least 103 victories in the regular season. The Astros are trying to become the first team since the 2000 Yankees to repeat as World Series champions, and the Red Sox understand the challenge.
“They’re strong at every spot, they’ve got a great starting rotation, their bullpen’s good, they score runs, they’re good defensively – very similar to our club,” Dombrowski said. “It’ll be a very interesting series. I know they play well on the road, but we’ll be ready. It’ll be fun.”
Pitching matchups don’t get much better than this: In Game 1 on Saturday, Houston’s Justin Verlander faces Boston’s Chris Sale. Both have made seven all-star teams and rank among the greatest power pitchers in major-league history. The Game 2 matchup on Sunday features two pitchers drafted first over all: Boston’s David Price (taken by Tampa Bay in 2007) and Houston’s Gerrit Cole (taken by Pittsburgh in 2011).