The hot stove is burning in late April, which is not something any Astros fan wanted to be saying at this point in the season. Alex Cora is out of a job in Boston, the Houston Astros are 11-19 and sinking, and the internet has done what the internet does—connected two dots and declared a solution.
It’s not that simple.
Yes, Cora was the Astros’ bench coach in 2017. Yes, he knows this organization, knows Jose Altuve, knows Carlos Correa, knows Lance McCullers Jr. Yes, Dana Brown quietly backed Joe Espada over the weekend while acknowledging that this pitching staff has been a disaster. And yes, the Phillies just fired Rob Thomson, making Cora the most prominent available manager in baseball.
But Jim Crane is not calling Alex Cora.
To understand why, you have to remember what Cora’s name means in the context of the 2017 World Series and what it would mean to have him walk back into Daikin Park. MLB’s investigation concluded that Cora was the primary architect of the sign-stealing scheme that season, the one non-player identified as central to the operation. Whether that verdict was fully fair—and there is a reasonable argument that Cora absorbed blame that should have been more widely distributed—it is the verdict that exists. It is the one that follows him.
Crane has spent the better part of a decade trying to turn the page on 2017. He issued apologies that pleased no one, watched his players get booed in stadiums across the country, and presided over a franchise that has never fully shaken the asterisk. Hiring back the man MLB named as the scandal’s primary non-player architect would not turn the page. It would rip it out entirely and hand it back to every critic the organization has.
And then there is the matter of who is still in that clubhouse. Altuve, Correa, and McCullers are not just roster names, they are the faces of both the championship and the controversy. Putting Cora in the dugout alongside them does not quietly go away after one press conference. It becomes the story every time a national outlet needs a hook, every time the Astros visit a hostile ballpark, every time anything goes sideways on the field.
Crane has never struck anyone as a man who courts that kind of noise.
The Espada situation is real. He is in the final year of his contract, the team is 11-19, and the pitching staff is historically bad by nearly every measure. If this team does not find its footing by June, the conversation will get louder and more serious. But the answer, if it comes to that, is not going to be Alex Cora.
Some reunions make too much sense on paper and too little sense everywhere else.
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