The Baltimore Orioles open the home portion of their Florida Grapefruit League schedule on Sunday March 23, 2020 against the Boston Red Sox. It’s fairly safe to say that Brandon Hyde will be in the home dugout at Ed Smith Stadium that afternoon managing the O’s. But who’s going to be manning the third base side visitors’ dugout?
As of last night, Boston’s current manager, Alex Cora, and the BoSox “mutually agreed to part ways.” Basically, the writing was on the wall. Incidentally the league said that the investigation into the Red Sox is still ongoing, and Cora and the organization could still face penalties. If what happened to Houston is any blueprint, the Red Sox organization is about to be guillotined.
Because he figured so prominently in the Houston situation and then appeared to bring the same system to Boston, many people “in the know” are saying that discipline for Cora was going to be worse than what Hinch got in Houston. Are we talking perhaps a two-year suspension? That part’s unclear.
Many fans have openly wondered whether the tentacles of this thing could reach the Orioles given that Mike Elias and much of his staff came from Houston. Anything’s possible, folks. Let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that Houston and Boston were the only teams pulling stunts like this. That would be incredibly naive and foolish.
However I tend to believe that Elias would have been suspended on Monday with the rest of the Houston personnel had he been on the league’s radar. I also tend to believe that given the fact that his name didn’t appear in the official report, odds are he’s in the clear. But you know who’s not in the clear? The Boston Red Sox.
Birdland Crush 