{"id":39328,"date":"2025-05-19T18:08:13","date_gmt":"2025-05-19T18:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/39328\/"},"modified":"2025-05-19T18:08:13","modified_gmt":"2025-05-19T18:08:13","slug":"alex-cora-bluntly-challenges-red-sox-starters-amid-struggles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/39328\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex Cora Bluntly Challenges Red Sox Starters Amid Struggles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the expected strengths of the 2025 Red Sox was an improved starting pitching rotation headlined by marquee offseason addition Garrett Crochet.<\/p>\n<p>The superstar southpaw largely has held up his end of the bargain thus far. But outside of Crochet, Boston hasn\u2019t received much at all from its group of starters.<\/p>\n<p>Those struggles continued Sunday when the <a href=\"https:\/\/nesn.com\/2025\/05\/red-sox-notes-boston-self-reflects-after-squandered-opportunity-vs-braves\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Red Sox dropped their weekend series<\/a> against the Braves at Fenway Park. Starter Brayan Bello only lasted 4 1\/3 innings, and he surrendered seven of the 10 runs that Atlanta put up in the matinee matchup. As Memorial Day quickly approaches, Boston has only seen two wins by starters this month to date.<\/p>\n<p>Alex Cora <a href=\"https:\/\/www.masslive.com\/redsox\/2025\/05\/as-brayan-bello-falters-red-sox-search-for-no-2-option-behind-garrett-crochet-continues-chris-cotillo.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">didn\u2019t sugarcoat the situation<\/a> after his club dipped to two games below .500.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey need to step up,\u201d Cora told reporters Sunday, per MassLive. \u201cThat\u2019s the bottom line. We have to step up as a rotation. It\u2019s not only Garrett. It\u2019s everybody. We have to do a better job as a group.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"nesn-in-content-ad__copy\">Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Cora\u2019s criticism certainly was warranted. Boston entered Monday with the seventh-worst ERA among starters in all of baseball and opposing hitters currently are hitting .271 off those Red Sox arms. The two teams with a worse mark in the latter stat \u2014 the Baltimore Orioles and the Colorado Rockies \u2014 have a combined 23 wins on the season.<\/p>\n<p>Hunter Dobbins, one of the bigger bright spots on Boston\u2019s entire pitching staff this season, will try to help set the tone for his peers Monday when <a href=\"https:\/\/nesn.com\/2025\/05\/why-alex-cora-wont-manage-red-sox-in-series-opener-vs-mets\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">the Red Sox kick off<\/a> a three-game set against the New York Mets. NESN\u2019s full coverage of the opener at Fenway begins at 5:30 p.m. ET.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the expected strengths of the 2025 Red Sox was an improved starting pitching rotation headlined by&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39329,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[858,5],"class_list":{"0":"post-39328","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baseball","8":"tag-alex-cora","9":"tag-baseball"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}