Red Sox's Alex Cora Firing Had Something to Do With Trevor Story

We're learning more reasons for the disconnect

Apr 15, 2026; Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA; Boston Red Sox shortstop Trevor Story celebrates the win over the Minnesota Twins after the game at Target Field. Mandatory Credit: Bruce Kluckhohn-Imagn Images | Bruce Kluckhohn-Imagn Images

Saturday's news regarding the Boston Red Sox was the type of bombshell that takes a few days to unravel.

After the front office and Red Sox ownership fired manager Alex Cora and five prominent members of his coaching staff, the baseball world was left to wonder what it didn't know about behind the scenes. Sure, the 10-17 start the Red Sox were off to this season was discouraging, but it also seemed like a small sample size to pull the plug on a staff that helped guide a club to the playoffs last year.

Fitting together the narrative behind a firing like this one is a complicated puzzle, but it appears that one of the important pieces involved shortstop Trevor Story.

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Story a key ingredient to disconnect?

Jul 10, 2025; Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Boston Red Sox shortstop Trevor Story (10) is greeted by manager Alex Cora (13) after scoring a run against the Tampa Bay Rays during the seventh inning at Fenway Park. Mandatory Credit: Eric Canha-Imagn Images | Eric Canha-Imagn Images

On Monday, CBS Sports' Julian McWilliams reported that Story's resurgent 2025 season was seen through different lenses by various folks in the organization, and that Cora's decision to bat him second in the lineup early in the season "raised questions internally."

"The disconnect on the field circles back to Story," McWilliams wrote. "There were those in the organization who believed Story was past his prime and no longer capable of being an everyday impact player."

"Even in a 2025 season in which Story started slow but finished with 25 home runs and 96 RBIs, the front office was not fully convinced, pointing to underlying metrics that suggested the production was not sustainable."

Entering play on Monday, the 33-year-old Story was batting .198 with a brutal .533 OPS and had struck out 37 times in 27 games. He'd made four errors at shortstop and posted negative-2 outs above average.

We saw Story have a horrific month last season in May, so thinking that he could find some way to become a productive player again isn't out of the question. But despite leading the team with 25 home runs and 96 runs batted in last season, there were some red flags in his game, especially when it came to defense late in the year.

The question here, however, isn't whether Story is about to bounce back. It's whether his struggles and Cora's trust in him were really a point of contention between the manager and chief baseball officer Craig Breslow, or if Breslow was looking for excuses to fire Cora and save his own hide a little while longer.