Now nearly two days removed from the shocking purge of the Boston Red Sox coaching staff, details continue to slowly emerge about the firings and what led to the disconnect between former manager Alex Cora and Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow.  

Breslow's roster construction has been a hot-button topic for the Red Sox since the June 2025 trade that sent Rafael Devers to the San Francisco Giants and carried over into a contentious offseason. Breslow laid the pathway for Boston to retain third baseman Alex Bregman and add another impact bat to the heart of the lineup when the offseason began, while adding an impact start through a trade that would likely alleviate the team's outfield logjam. 

Instead, Bregman departed for Chicago, signing a five-year deal with the Cubs, while Breslow struck out on the other top-hitting free agents, instead pivoting to pitching and run prevention. All the while keeping the outfield logjam firmly intact. 

The offseason failures of the front office left Cora to juggle an incomplete roster, shuffling five outfielders in and out of the lineup daily, something that Breslow noted made Cora's job more difficult in Sunday morning's press conference, saying, "We've talked about the fact that ultimately the accountability for the roster falls on me and this was a challenging roster to manage just given the position player group, that's something I acknowledge and something I acknowledged with Alex yesterday."

Cora's frustration with the roster was at times on full display, with him using the phrase "the roster is the roster" at various points throughout the first 27 games of the season. Other times, Cora would point to the difficulty of managing the logjam, telling Tim Healey of the Boston Globe on March 29, "It’s not easy; whoever thinks that this is easy to move them around, they’re wrong. I’m going to say it like that. It’s not that easy, but I’ll make it work." 

According to CBS Sports' Julian McWilliams, the disconnect only grew further when the Milwaukee Brewers and former Red Sox utilityman David Hamilton visited Fenway Park for a three-game series in early April.

Per McWilliams, the front office viewed Hamilton as a player whose "speed, defensive versatility, overall athleticism, and underlying metrics made him a clear asset," while the coaching staff viewed him as a "flawed player." 

Hamilton spent the first three years of his big league career before being shipped to Milwaukee in the offseason deal that brought Caleb Durbin to Boston. In 204 games for Boston, Hamilton hit just .222 with a .642 OPS, never seeming to capitalize on the traits that the front office thought made him valuable. 

Overall, Hamilton is hitting just .234 on the season with a .604 OPS. Though he did perform well in the three-game set in Boston, hitting .333, laying down two sacrifice bunts, something that Cora at the time acknowledged they were unable to get him to successfully do in Boston. 

The series from Hamilton, per McWilliams, led the front office to question the player development process at the big league level: "Why do a lot of players go to other places and get better? Why do other guys come here and get worse?" a source told McWilliams. 

The promotions of interim manager Chad Tracy, third base coach Chad Epperson, and several other minor league coaches with familiarity with the Red Sox' young core, along with Breslow and the front office, point to dissatisfaction with the development at the major league level. 

The Red Sox kicked off the Chad Tracy era with a 5-3 series-clinching win over the Baltimore Orioles on Sunday afternoon. They'll head up to Toronto for a three-game series with the reigning AL Champion Blue Jays. Ranger Suarez will get the start for Boston opposite Dylan Cease for Toronto. First pitch from Rogers Centre is at 7:07 p.m. ET. 

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