By: Jonathan L. Entin*
The Boston Red Sox fired veteran manager Alex Cora on Saturday, April 25.[1] The next day, the Philadelphia Phillies, who were in the process of firing their own skipper, offered their manager’s job to Cora.[2] Cora declined, saying that he preferred to spend more time with his family.[3] His Red Sox contract ran through 2027, so presumably he would get paid for that time.[4]
But maybe not. It is a basic principle of contract law that the party who was harmed by another party’s breach must nevertheless mitigate damages.[5] The idea is that the victim can’t sit on his hands when he could have taken steps to reduce his financial harm. Cora’s rejection of the Phillies’ offer might show that he failed to mitigate his damages, even if the Phillies weren’t willing to pay him as much as the Red Sox did.
It isn’t likely that the Sox will make this argument, but if any team were to take such a hard-nosed position, it is Boston. After all, they trashed Terry Francona, who led them to their first World Series championship in 86 years during his first season in 2004 and won another title three years later.[6] But they fired him soon afterward when the team fell out of the playoffs after an epic September 2011 collapse.[7]
The collapse and reports of player drinking during games might have justified Francona’s dismissal. Not content to rely on that plausible rationale, the front office also put out obnoxious comments about the state of his marriage and his supposed drug abuse while suffering from back problems to help justify their dismissal.[8]
So, let’s consider how the Red Sox might try to avoid paying Cora as much as they owe him for the balance of his contract. The team breached his contract by dismissing him while the deal was still in effect, and ordinarily would have had to keep paying him through next year. But the Phillies were prepared to pay him something for leading their team, and any payments they made would have reduced Cora’s economic harm at the hands of the Red Sox. Because Cora failed to mitigate his damages, Boston might be able to offset the amount that Philadelphia would have paid Cora from what the Sox otherwise owed him.
Now, the duty to mitigate is not absolute. The victim of a breach of contract need not take just any job offer even if income from that job would offset the victim’s economic losses.[9] This is illustrated by a case involving the celebrated and much-honored actor Shirley MacLaine.[10] MacLaine signed a contract with a major movie studio in 1965 to star in a musical, but the studio later decided to drop that production and offered her a leading role in a western instead, which she rejected and sued for breach of contract.[11] The studio claimed that she had failed to mitigate her damages, but the California Supreme Court rejected that claim.[12] MacLaine’s refusal to appear in the western was legally justified: the musical would have shown off her talent as a dancer as well as an actor, whereas the western would not have showcased her dancing abilities.[13] Moreover, she could have stayed in Los Angeles to make the musical but would have had to relocate to Australia to make the western.[14] These factors made the western a “different and inferior” alternative to the musical.[15]
But MacLaine’s case wouldn’t help Cora. Although the Red Sox have had a slightly better record in the twenty-first century, winning four World Series titles,[16] the Phillies have also been a strong team that has frequently made the playoffs and appeared three times in the World Series, with one win.[17] The teams’ attendance has been comparable, too.[18] So it would be a stretch to say that the Philadelphia job was really a “different and inferior” option that would justify Cora’s failure to mitigate his damages by rejecting that position.
The Red Sox probably won’t take such a hard-nosed stand against a highly regarded former manager who almost certainly will return to the dugout somewhere else before long. Nevertheless, that is more because of an industry norm than because the legal argument is weak.
* David L. Brennan Professor Emeritus of Law, Case Western Reserve University.
[1] See Phillies fire Rob Thomson, tried to hire Alex Cora as manager, ESPN (Apr. 28, 2026, at 10:55 ET) https://www.espn.com/mlb/story?id=48618118&_slug_=phillies-fire-manager-rob-thomson-sources-say.
[2] Id.
[3] Id.
[4] See id.
[5] See, e.g., Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 350(1) (A.L.I. 1981) (providing that damages are not recoverable “for loss that the injured party could have avoided without undue risk, burden or humiliation”); id. cmt. b (explaining that failure to mitigate results in reduction of a damages award by the amount that the plaintiff could have avoided through mitigation efforts); Restatement (First) of Contracts § 336(1) (A.L.I. 1932) (providing that damages are not available “for harm that the plaintiff should have foreseen and could have avoided with reasonable effort”); id. cmt. d (noting that a plaintiff who “fails to make the reasonable effort with the result that the harm is greater than it would otherwise have been . . . cannot get judgment for the amount of this avoidable and unnecessary increase”).
[6] Joe McDonald, Terry Francona, Red Sox split, ESPN (Sep. 30, 2011, at 17:25 ET), https://www.espn.com/boston/mlb/story/_/id/7040260/terry-francona-boston-red-sox-part-ways-two-titles.
[7] See id.
[8] See Report outlines Red Sox problems, ESPN (Oct. 12, 2011, at 10:16 ET) https://www.espn.com/boston/mlb/story/_/id/7091574/boston-red-sox-collapse-terry-francona-distracted-pitchers-john-lackey-josh-beckett-jon-lester-party-report-says.
[9] The injured party must make “reasonable” mitigation efforts, even if those efforts are unsuccessful. Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 350(2) (A.L.I. 1981); id. cmt. b; Restatement (First) of Contracts § 336 (A.L.I. 1932); id. cmt. d.
[10] Parker v. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp., 474 P.2d 689 (Cal. 1970).
[11] Id. at 690–91.
[12] Id. at 693–94.
[13] Id.
[14] Id. at 694.
[15] Id. at 693.
[16] See Boston Red Sox Team History & Encyclopedia, Baseball Reference, https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/BOS/.
[17] See Philadelphia Phillies Team History & Encyclopedia, Baseball Reference, https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/PHI/.
[18] See MLB Attendance History, Baseball Cube, https://www.thebaseballcube.com/content/mlb_attendance/.
