HOUSTON — Harsh punishments were handed down to the Houston Astros on Monday, following Major League Baseball’s report on the team’s cheating scandal.
General manager Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch were both suspended by the league, then fired by team owner Jim Crane. The team was also fined $5 million and lost draft picks.
Throughout the summary of findings released Monday, the name Alex Cora kept popping up. Alex Cora is the current manager of the Boston Red Sox, but former Astros bench coach. Cora was bench coach for Houston in 2017 when the Astros won the World Series.
According to the report, Cora not only knew of the Astros sign-stealing scheme, he was instrumental in making it happen. The report says he was involved in both developing the banging scheme and using the replay room to decode and send signs.
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Cora left the Astros after the 2017 season to manage the Red Sox. There’s now an investigation into sign-stealing with Boston, and the league report says that Cora’s discipline will come when that investigation is finished.
Cora spent 16 years as a player in the Major Leagues. He played with the Dodgers from 1998 to 2004, then went on to Cleveland before he was traded to the Boston Red Sox. He called Fenway Park home from 2005 to 2008, where he was part of a World Series-winning team in 2007. He went on to play two years with the Mets, one year with the Rangers and finished his playing career with the Washington Nationals in 2011.
As a manager, he won back-to-back World Series, the first with the Astros as their bench coach in 2017 and the second as the manager of the Red Sox in 2018. When he took over as manager in Boston, he became only the second Puerto Rican-born manager in MLB history.
Cora has an older brother, Joey Cora, played in the Major Leagues for 11 seasons.