Alex Cora gives interesting explanation for his ejection during Red Sox' loss to Rays

BOSTON -- Frustration boiled over for Alex Cora on Monday afternoon, leading to the Red Sox manager getting ejected by home plate umpire Chris Guccione after the bottom of the eighth inning.

That argument from Cora came after two strikes were called at the bottom of the strike zone -- first to Justin Turner to make it an 0-2 count, then to Rafael Devers for a called strike three. Those pitches were at the edge of the zone, but both were strikes.

While getting tossed for arguing two correct calls would be a bit of an embarrassment, Cora said after the 4-1 loss to Tampa that he was mostly frustrated with a missed call from an inning earlier.

According to Cora, Rays pitcher Calvin Faucher committed a pitch clock violation prior to throwing his first pitch to Rob Refsnyder in the seventh inning. 

"I think he missed one the previous inning that he really missed, and it was actually a pitch, it was a rule pitch. One of those. He changed the complexion of the at-bat," Cora said. "The first pitch to Ref, it was a pitch violation. If we're gonna play this game of the clock and all this stuff, we've gotta call it the right way."

Cora admitted that both pitches in the eighth inning were strikes, so he pinned much of his lingering frustration on what he considered to have been a black-and-white rules violation in the seventh.

"The other ones, I get it. They were strikes -- Turner and Raffy. But a 1-0 count with first and second and two outs is a different at-bat. And that one either is a ball or is a pitch, and it was a ball. Rule-wise, it was a ball," Cora said. "I was upset. And that one is not about judging or strike zone or whatever. It's the rule, and if the clock is a zero, it's a ball. And that's why I was so upset."

Instead of an automatic ball, Refsnyder took a called first strike on that pitch in question. He ended up striking out looking, leaving two runners on base.

The frustration, though, likely is tied into the Red Sox' relative freefall over the past month. After sitting seven games over .500 at 21-14 on May 6, the Red Sox went 9-16 to drop to 30-30 on the season after Monday's loss.

Just as he did on Sunday, Cora spent much of his Monday postgame session with the media lamenting his team's defense above all else. That came despite Boston scoring just five combined runs over the past three games. Specifically, he pointed out Refsnyder's throw to the plate on a Manuel Margot RBI single, as the throw allowed Margot to take second base with nobody out in the top of the fifth inning.

Margot ended up advancing to third base on a ground out to the right side and then scoring on a single through a drawn-in infield.

"[We have to] play better baseball, man. Like even that play, we throw to the plate, they advance, and we give an opponent the opportunity to score. It's man on second, no outs again," Cora said. "Offensively, we'll be fine. I think the approach is good and we've got some guys that are gonna get going. If you stay with the approach, you're gonna be fine. Pitching-wise, we pitched well today. [Brayan Bello] was really good. So just keep grinding. Nobody said that it's going to be easy. We're going on the road to face two good teams. Just go out there and have good at-bats and play better defense. That's the key. You have to do that. We keep talking to them, and hopefully we can get better."

Cora said the Red Sox' current record is reflective of what they've been, but he did express some confidence that it can be better.

"Just keep the grind, keep going. That's the bottom line. We're playing .500 right now," he said. "Like I said yesterday, are we great? No. Are we bad? No. This is where we're at. When the season started a while ago, we were 0-0. And now we're 30-30. So 60 games under our belt and we've still got plenty of them. So keep getting better, we're gonna get healthy obviously. But I think at the end of the day, like I said, the defensive part of it, we have to improve. And that's something that I think we have pitched OK, and offensively we're gonna be fine, running the bases we've been good. If we clean that up, I think we can start winning a lot of games."