Alex Cora wasn’t going to take any chances on Sunday afternoon.
Less than two weeks after the Red Sox manager and the team opted to pull ace Garrett Crochet at 85 pitches and one out in the sixth inning — a predetermined move to monitor his workload — Cora had a simple message for the lefty going into the seventh inning at Truist Park.
“He told me, ‘Let’s keep going.’ And I was fired up,” Crochet said of Cora’s message in the dugout on Sunday afternoon. “I was just hoping it wasn’t for [the first batter] only.