Month: January 2020

Davison’s 3 sends Wisconsin past No. 17 Maryland, 56-54

NHL Capsules

Former Mae Young Classic semifinalist Mercedes Martinez and independent wrestling standout Jake Atlas are among the newest recruits to report to the WWE Performance Center.

Tyler Cheese scored 23 points as Akron romped past Northern Illinois 72-49 to remain undefeated in the Mid-American Conference

Jonathan Toews scored 42 seconds into overtime and assisted on Chicago’s two other goals, as the Blackhawks rallied to beat Ottawa Senators 3-2

Kyler Edwards scored a career-high 24 points, Davide Moretti had 14 and No. 23 Texas Tech used a late push to beat Kansas State 77-63 Tuesday night.

In the wake of MLB’s investigation into the Astros, the Red Sox had no choice when it came to Alex Cora.

Baseball has been embedded in the soul of Alex Cora since he was a child, falling asleep on the floor of the press box of Yldefonso Sola Morales Stadium in Caguas, Puerto Rico, where his dad covered winter ball as a newspaper columnist and served as a scout for the Rangers and Padres. Suddenly, at the age of 44, Alex Cora is not just the former manager of the Red Sox, he also is about to be disowned by the game he loves.

All because the opportunity to cheat was too available, too enticing.

In releasing a statement as part of the “mutual parting”–code for getting in front of his suspension, if not likely firing–Cora let the emotions seep into his words. He called the two years managing the Red Sox “the best years of my life.” And in saying goodbye to Boston, he said, “There is nothing like it in all of baseball, and I will miss it dearly.”

It’s worse than that. He will miss baseball, that part of his soul that always has nourished him. You have to remember commissioner Rob Manfred did not just suspend Hinch for a season. He also barred Hinch during that period from setting foot in any spring training, Major League or minor league facility and from traveling for the club, which would be a ban even against scouting amateur talent. That’s the definition of persona non grata in baseball.

Cora is looking at the same fate, only longer. As a player, broadcaster, coach and manager, Cora has been around professional ballparks for a quarter of a century, his entire adult life.

The minute Red Sox owner John Henry and his front office finished reading Manfred’s nine-page statement on the Houston sign-stealing scandal they knew Alex Cora could not and would not manage their team any longer. In influence and volume, no named person is more connected to the 2017 Astros’ cheating schemes than Cora.

The commissioner suspended Hinch for a season for failing to act–a crime of omission. Hinch was then fired by Astros owner Jim Crane.

Cora was a mastermind and major participant in what went down in Houston. He ordered a video room technician to install near the dugout a monitor that showed a constant feed from a centerfield camera. He developed the trash can system. He used the dugout phone to call the replay room to get the signs himself.

Cora was looking at serving more time than Hinch–and that was before the commissioner finishes his investigation into allegations that Cora, as manager of the 2018 Red Sox, presided over another scheme to misuse technology to decode signs.

The Red Sox will move on. They’ll find another manager. Maybe it’s Ron Roenicke, the bench coach and a former major league manager who holds great respect in that clubhouse. That would be the easiest of transitions. Or maybe the new general manager, Chaim Bloom, rightfully will say, “Wait a minute. Rather than just inheriting something in house, I deserve the right to launch a full-scale search to find my best choice as manager–the one I want for the next five to seven years.”

We knew the Red Sox were staring at a major transition, what with Mookie Betts hitting free agency at the end of this season, boatloads of money tied up in an aging, oft-injured pitching staff and a payroll they prefer to be trimmed. That transition just got bigger.

The game survives stars and scandals. It goes on. But what of Alex Cora? What becomes of him and his love of baseball? Today he is too toxic to think that another club someday with let him manage their team. Over much time, and in proving himself in jobs of lesser responsibility, he can earn back that chance, if he wants it.

Think about how Cora was hired as Houston’s bench coach for the 2017 season. He had spent four years in the broadcast booth after he retired, while also serving as a general manager in the Puerto Rico Winter League for five offseasons. He also held the dual role of manager/GM for two of those seasons but fired himself as manager because “I didn’t have fun doing it.” He grew too intense.

The Astros threw him right into the role of bench coach, rather than a base coach. And with that competitive fire in him–there probably was still too much player in him–Cora went rogue. Remember, Cora had never played or coached under the expanded replay system. Suddenly he was a bench coach in a dugout with a full-time camera feed from centerfield and monitor that at his command could be placed within steps of the dugout. He fell and he fell hard.

He also wanted to help his good friend, Carlos Beltran, the pro’s pro who everybody respected in the clubhouse. And if Beltran, in his final season, was frustrated about hitting .234 almost two months into the season, well, Cora could help with that.

The 2017 Astros, cheating “throughout the postseason,” as Manfred wrote, won the World Series. Nobody said anything. Their methods not only worked but also they stayed unknown. So why when Cora was named to manage the Red Sox would he have stopped a similar scheme? (Remember, the 2017 Red Sox already had their own cheating scam on the books.) The 2018 Red Sox won the World Series.

In a span of nine days it all fell apart–the Astros’ reputation, the jobs of Hinch and Houston general manager Jeff Luhnow, the Red Sox’ 2020 plans, the place in his beloved game for Cora.

It began with a phone call.

A week ago Monday night, Manfred telephoned Henry. Reporters from The Athletic had called Manfred that day for a statement about a story they were preparing to run: that the Red Sox stole signs with the help of technology in 2018. Manfred wasn’t officially done with the Houston investigation, though he was about to wrap it up. He knew where he was going with it before the holidays but waited for that time to pass before dropping such bad news. He went on vacation himself.

It was his first day back in the office when The Athletic called. Manfred already knew about the 2018 Red Sox issue. It was the Astros who first alerted him to their scheme during the course of that three-month investigation. Manfred and his investigators planned to pursue the charge privately. But he knew The Athletic story pushed it into the public.

And so he called Henry to inform him essentially, “You’re next.” He told Henry he should expect the same level of thoroughness his office had just brought to the Houston investigation.

“Turning over e-mails?” Henry asked.

“Everything.”

That same night Crane telephoned Henry, owner-to-owner, to give him an idea of what he was in for.

The next day Manfred announced he was investigating the 2018 Red Sox. That investigation is expected to last one or two months, not three. The difference is with Houston, Manfred had multiple years and multiple infractions to chase. Boston is only about 2018.

As for the 2018 postseason, protocol suddenly changed. The 2017 postseason had no safeguards against using the replay monitor or replay room to steal signs. By the 2018 postseason, cheating was so rampant that the commissioner’s office received complaints from “a number of teams” about “a number of teams” that were cheating. Paranoia ruled. So Manfred ordered MLB security agents to guard the replay monitor and the runway between the clubhouse and the monitor. I remember being in Milwaukee for Game 1 of the NLCS and the players and coaches remarking about the strangely intense level of security.

Cora seemed to make every right move in the 2018 postseason and in the rare case when he didn’t–sticking with Eduardo Rodriguez too long in World Series Game 4–he admitted it, bringing it up himself unsolicited. He was beloved, not only for winning the World Series as a manager but also emerging as someone fans could root for.

When Dave Dombrowski offered Cora the job in Boston, Cora said he would take it on one condition: that the Red Sox provide planeloads of relief help for the people of Puerto Rico suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

The job and the platform are gone now, lost to the temptation of technology. Hinch, 45, and Cora, 44, are likable, smart, savvy men with families. Not only did they win back-to-back World Series, they became templates on what a modern manager should be in the age of empowered young players and a data-driven game.

The irony is that keeping that strong bond with their players and technology itself undid them. Hinch couldn’t bring himself to risk upsetting his clubhouse culture when his most important, revered players had gone down the path of cheating. Cora made it happen.

They once defined the state of the art in managers. Now they are exiled. It happened so quickly, in these nine days that shook the baseball world.

In just under a year’s time, Joe Brady has gone from low-level NFL assistant to national champion at LSU to Carolina Panthers OC. His quick return to the NFL shouldn’t be shocking.

NEW ORLEANS, La. — The man moved through the ocean of purple and gold inside a dimly lit Irish pub, the LSU hoody hiding his face, his hands in his pockets, head down. All around him, Tigers fans slurped from beer mugs and cocktail glasses, oblivious that the hottest assistant in college football was in their midst a day before the SEC championship game against Georgia.

The murmurs slowly began. Is that Joe Brady? One recognized him and then another. I think that’s Joe Brady! He started having to pose for photos. Fans began screaming his name. Finally, Brady had to leave, darting through a parting sea of fans, all of them awed at brushing shoulders with such a celebrity. And then, as if a maestro were instructing them in unison, the LSU fans began to chant his name. “Joe Brady! Joe Brady! Joe Brady!” Clearly embarrassed, he scurried through the crowd and out into the downtown Atlanta streets.

Welcome to college football, Joe. Good luck finding this in the NFL.

The news Tuesday of Brady’s departure to the pro ranks is not shocking. Most around LSU expected him to leave for the NFL, either this year or next year. “He’s an NFL guy, and he didn’t really hide it,” says one insider at the school. And while Brady did agree to a new contract with the school for a big raise and new title—even signing a memorandum of agreement—no deal is guaranteed. As SI.com reported on Saturday, the contract allowed Brady the freedom to accept either a head coaching job in college for move to the NFL. He chose the latter.

So, in just under one year’s time, Brady, 30, has gone from a lower-level NFL assistant for the Saints, where he earned in the five figures, to an NFL offensive coordinator pulling in, very likely, more than $2 million a year. So don’t blame him for taking the job, despite it not having the pageantry and fan outpouring he saw in Baton Rouge—or in that pub in Atlanta. There’s another thing the NFL is missing: the year-around, relentless and pain-staking recruiting cycle of convincing teenagers to attend your school. Some like it (ahem, LSU head coach Ed Orgeron) and others do not. If you’ve ever had to speak on a daily basis with multiple 16- and 17-year-olds in an attempt to persuade them to settle on one decision—any freaking decision—then you know part of the reason that Brady is heading to a place where some of his players will be older than him.

What Carolina is getting is a brash kid responsible for overhauling a traditional offense into a spread scheme that led the nation in both scoring offense and total offense. He helped produce a Heisman Trophy winner in Joe Burrow and led LSU to the 2019 national championship, a 42–25 win over Clemson that’s just hours old. Brady relates to players because he’s not so different from them. He wears Air Jordans and a fancy gold chain. He’s “cool,” says one LSU assistant. And he had a significant role not just in the transforming of the team’s offense but with the play-calling, splitting duties with the grizzled veteran, offensive coordinator Steve Ensminger.

“Sometimes he’ll just… it could be a third down, ‘Hey, you got it on this one.’ It could be a red zone situation or a drive. It’s all predicated off of how he’s feeling and if he’s in a groove,” Brady said in an interview with Sports Illustrated during the season. “There’s certain situations and every great coordinator trusts certain coaches in certain situations. If there’s a situation I feel strongly on or confident on throughout a week, he’s going to have the final say and be able to call it, but if he trusts that I’m confident on a scheme, on a certain down and distance, he has not issues with saying ‘you got it.’”

“At the end of the day,” Brady continued, “he’s the playcaller and I sit and prepare and try to help as much as possible. If he says, ‘You got it,’ I’ll go with it.”

Brady’s departure is a second blow to a program that loses Burrow as well, both of its Joes gone, the most noteworthy catalysts to an offense that may go down as one of the best in college football history. So what now? There is an obvious choice already on LSU’s staff: analyst Jorge Munoz, the former Louisiana offensive coordinator who worked closely this season with Burrow and the offense. All signs point to Ensminger, 61, remaining on staff in his primary role, but LSU might lose DJ Mangas, another LSU analyst who is close with Brady, both of them William & Mary alums.

That’s where this all began, a small public college in Virginia. Brady signed with Air Force as a receiver out of his Florida high school, transferred to William & Mary and then served as a defensive assistant there before moving to a graduate assistant role at Penn State. He’s been around some great minds. At Penn State there was offensive coordinator Joe Moorhead and defensive coordinator Bob Shoop. At the Saints, in 2017–18, there was Sean Payton and quarterback Drew Brees. He adopted Payton’s passing concepts that Brees flourished with and brought them to Baton Rouge, where Burrow did the same.

We know what you’re thinking: Was this year’s offensive success at LSU because of Joe No. 1, Brady, or Joe No. 2, Burrow? Well, we’ll find out the answer soon enough at the same place: in the NFL.

We size up the potential candidates to manage Boston in 2020 as scandal shakes the organization.