The Red Sox are officially playoff bound thanks to a historic turnaround from a slow start to the season and a redirection under interim and now full-time manager Chad Tracy. The fact that Tracy made history – and even more impressively family history – is still pretty mind-boggling, even though I wrote about it on May 1.
The blueprint and context was there as Chad’s father, Jim Tracy, took over as the manager of the Rockies in May 2009 after Colorado fired Clint Hurdle. The Rockies took off immediately with a 21-7 record in June on the way to a franchise-record 92 wins and a playoff berth. Tracy won National League Manager of the Year in a magical season at Coors Field.
Advertisement
Several outlets discussed this history when Tracy took over from the 10-17 start to the season that cost Alex Cora his job. It didn’t change right away for Boston with a 13-14 record in June before that stunning 32-5 run that vaulted the Red Sox back into playoff contention. And now here we are. Father and son each taking over as interim skippers and guiding their respective teams to the postseason after sub-.500 starts. Here’s an excerpt from the story we published the time:
Jim Tracy showed the impact of the right in-season switch. Can his son get another team to the playoffs 17 years later?
The stories would write themselves in one of the more fascinating intertwingings in recent baseball history.
Ultimately, these situations aren’t totally the same and the Red Sox roster has arguably more to overcome than Colorado did.
“I think you can’t paint every situation with the same brush,” (Dan) O’Dowd commented while discussing the differences, including the initial decisions with Hurdle in Colorado and Cora in Boston.
For Chad Tracy in the meantime, however, the ex-Colorado executive believes in the Red Sox interim given the baseball path his family set for him to follow one way or another.
The paths and personnel to make both postseasons happen are noticeably different. The Red Sox have now clinched back-to-back playoff berths, but the expectations of how far they’d go in October were different. Colorado struggled early, but that team had also been to the World Series just two years prior and still had a star-studded roster. Not to say the Red Sox didn’t have big names, but Roman Anthony and Garrett Crochet did spend most of 2026 on the shelf with injuries.
Regardless, the Red Sox got the best possible scenario out of their managerial change that will forever link Jim and Chad Tracy even deeper than the already deep father-son relationship.
In October 2009, the Rockies fell to the eventual National League champion Philadelphia Phillies in the National League Division Series. With Chad Tracy at the helm, how far will the Red Sox go this postseason?
Read the full article here
