Alex Cora may have twice turned down the opportunity to become the Phillies’ manager, but he’s not ruling out returning to a dugout in 2027.
The 51-year-old, who was fired by the Red Sox in April after a 10-17 start, isn’t committing to managing next season but he didn’t shut down the possibility during an interview with Rob Bradford on the “Baseball isn’t Boring” podcast.
“I don’t know, man. We have to wait and see. We’ve still got one more year for that, which is great,” Cora said on the episode released Monday, noting he’s still getting paid by Boston through next season. “If we decide as a family that’s the route we want to take, we’ll do it. It’d be cool to go through the process again, it’d be cool. It will help whoever — if I decide I want to go through the process and somebody gives us a chance to interview, it’d be good for them to hear it, how I see it, my values as a manager, understand everything that goes with it and go from there, and they make a decision.
“I’m not 100 percent sure I want to do it,” he added.
The Phillies fired Rob Thomson shortly after Cora lost his job, and Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski — who hired Cora in late 2017 when he ran the Red Sox front office and won a World Series in 2018 — offered Cora the Philly job, which Cora turned down to spend time with his family. He did so again after the season, and the Phillies elevated Don Mattingly from interim to full-time manager.
Cora is in the final stages of planning his wedding to longtime partner Angelica Feliciano. They share twins who were born in 2017, and he has a daughter with his ex-wife, Nilda.
Cora said he and Dombrowski talk frequently, and Dombrowski was one of the first people he called after he got fired in April as he was seeking guidance.
“I’ve got to be very honest — obviously pride comes into play early on, but then when people that you really care (about) and you love, they fly into Boston and they slow things down, it’s like, OK, we’ve got to make sure we do the right thing,” Cora said of talking with Dombrowski in the aftermath of the firing. “You have to make sure you take care of your people. And I think the best thing for the Cora-Felicianos is this, is to stay away and, at that point, kind of regroup and enjoy.”
As for why he got fired, Cora acknowledged that an executive inheriting a manager like Chaim Bloom and Craig Breslow did with him in Boston isn’t ideal, and he was upset that other coaches also lost their jobs. But he boiled the dismissal down to one thing.
“I got fired because we didn’t pitch in the month of April. It’s as simple as that,” Cora said.
