All right, let's go right to the guest line for our weekly conversation with Red Sox manager Alex Cora.

Alex Cora on W.EEI Afternoons is brought to you by Shaw's and Star Market, the official supermarket of the Red Sox Radio Network by Arbella, here for baseball fans, here for good, and by John Sewer and Drain Cleaning, the name to know when your drains don't flow. Alex, how we doing this week?

Doing good, doing good, How are you guys doing?

We're good, thanks.

We got to start with last night's game and obviously that performance from Garrett Crochet,

one of the strangest things I've witnessed.

Just nothing was working.

You had to pull him in the second inning.

Was it hard for you to watch from the dugout, and how do you explain that start?

Yeah, it's very hard.

You know, as a manager, like, man, just take him early, you know, and then see what happens.

But at the same time, you still have to manage the rest of the series, right?

And at that point, it's kind of like how many outs he can give us, right, regardless of the score. But then that second inning happened, and we had to pull him out. And then the bullpen did a good job, kind of like help us survive as far as like innings, and we're still ready for today and tomorrow. As far as like Garrett, you see the first inning and, you know, ground ball over the third base, two ground balls, a base set up the middle, a blue single to left. That's part of baseball, right? Guys are going to have an approach. They're going to put the ball in play, and sometimes you're going to run into bad luck. But the second inning wasn't bad luck. They put some good at bats. There were some

walks involved. Command was off. The sweeper wasn't part of it. And, you know, credit to the

twins, too. You know, they have faith scoble, Framber, crochet, and they have done an amazing

job the last seven or ten days, and we just have to be better. Real quick, can I follow up on that?

You mentioned it. Those stats have been making the rounds on social media, Framber and

Schoble and Crochet and 22 runs, I think, allowed and all of that.

Is there something to that?

Is there something going on in Minnesota?

Like, how do you explain great pitchers struggling so badly in Minnesota?

I think, actually, I had a conversation with my brother.

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