Not-so-subtle Alex Cora tweet rubs salt in Giants' growing Rafael Devers wound

After getting swept by the Miami Marlins over the weekend, SF Giants slugger Rafael Devers made things even worse by resisting being pulled out of the game for pinch runner Jonah Cox in the ninth inning. It was an awful look and makes one question manager Tony Vitello’s hold on the clubhouse.

Just to pour salt in the wound, former Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora chimed in on the Devers incident with a not-so-subtle social media post. He wrote, “But, but…” followed by an emoji of a mouth zipped shut. The timing of the post suggests it was a not-so-veiled reference to Devers and seems to suggest this sort of behavior is not all that surprising to Boston’s former manager.

Devers obviously made a lot of headlines for the wrong reasons last year by refusing to play first base for Boston. He didn’t like the way that the Red Sox signed Alex Bregman even though Devers was the team’s third baseman, moved him to designated hitter, and then asked him to play a new position when another guy got hurt.

One could understand his frustration, but it was obviously a selfish move and not very team-oriented at all. I even wrote about it last year as evidence for why the Giants shouldn’t trade for Devers because that sort of attitude seemed to run anathema to the kind of culture president of baseball operations Buster Posey was trying to build.

This Cora tweet seems to be a, “I told you so,” or maybe a, “I wasn’t allowed to say what I really thought about that guy,” kind of post. Cora said all the right things about Devers last year and wished him the best, but after Cora was fired by Boston earlier this season it seems he may be a bit more willing to share how he really felt about the whole Devers situation.

Giants are stuck with an underperforming hitter with a bad attitude

Now the Giants are stuck with the guy. He’s signed to an absurd contract that no team in its right mind will take on unless the Giants agree to pay off a fair chunk of it. He’s hitting .238/.302/.433 with 11 home runs and 36 runs batted in. He has not been the guy the Giants thought they were getting and up until now he hasn’t really done any sort of acting up like he did in Boston, but when things are going bad that’s when people’s true colors start to come out.

One hopes that the pinch runner incident will be an isolated one, but if the Giants continue to struggle and continue to be a basement dweller in MLB then it’s hard to see Devers’ attitude improving very much. Maybe the Giants need to bench him or do something to show that sort of behavior won’t be tolerated but after Vitello chose not to bench Willy Adames earlier in the season for a pretty egregious mental error it seems unlikely he will make Devers ride the pine.

Cora and the Red Sox probably feel a bit vindicated for their decision to offload Devers after this episode. They should feel vindicated just based off his stats but if his bad attitude made the trip from the east coast and is finally starting to come out then this could end up being arguably the worst trade in franchise history.

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