BOSTON — In the hours after the Boston Red Sox’s 10-3 loss to the Baltimore Orioles on Friday night, which dropped the club to 9-17 on the year, chief baseball officer Craig Breslow and top team officials huddled to discuss how they could still salvage the season.

By Saturday morning, Breslow made the call to clean house. He, team president Sam Kennedy and principal owner John Henry flew to Baltimore, and following that afternoon’s game the trio informed manager Alex Cora and five members of his coaching staff in person that they’d been relieved of their duties.

Sunday morning Breslow and Kennedy spoke to reporters explaining why they felt such a dramatic change was necessary. Among the first questions asked: “Why now?”

“It really comes down to the belief that we have in the players and the belief we have in the group to accomplish what we set out to accomplish,” Breslow said. “By acting today it gives us 135 games ahead of us, so we’ve got almost a full season’s worth of run to take advantage of this fresh start and ultimately to compete for a division and a deep postseason run.”

Over the course of 25 minutes Breslow and Kennedy explained their decision to fire one of the most accomplished managers in franchise history after just 26 games and elevate Triple-A manager Chad Tracy to the big league role on an interim basis. Kennedy described the moves as “painful” but “necessary,” and Breslow said it was his responsibility to do whatever he feels is necessary to give the Red Sox the best chance to succeed.

“Right now we feel like this change, these changes, were warranted,” Breslow said, “and we’re really excited about the chance for Chad to come in and be a consistent stabilizing voice and one the majority of our player group is familiar with.”

While neither would get into the specifics about what Cora was doing wrong or what he could have done differently besides win more games, Breslow repeatedly expressed confidence in the current roster and that he believes the first step forward is getting the players back to their typical levels of production.

“We are clearly not performing up to our expectations, up to the players’ historical track records,” Breslow said. “We need to do everything possible to get there and then determine exactly whether or not this was the right strategy, but step one is getting the players to perform the way that they have historically, the way we believe they can and putting support in terms of staff and resources around them in order to do that.”

Kennedy also affirmed that the decision to move on from Cora was ultimately Breslow’s call.

“Absolutely,” Kennedy said. “We hired Craig to be our chief baseball officer, he runs the baseball operation, we are a front office-led baseball operation and our job is to support the entire group the best we possibly can, and that’s what we did in this instance.”

As far as what comes next, Breslow said a lot is still up in the air. Double-A manager Chad Epperson will take over as interim third base coach and WooSox hitting coach Collin Hetzler has been elevated to the big league staff, but beyond that Breslow said more additions will be made and that Tracy will have a voice in assembling his new staff.

Breslow also didn’t rule out the possibility that the Red Sox could hire a new permanent manager before the end of the season.

“We could be, it could also be that Chad is exactly what we’re looking for,” Breslow said. “We have full confidence in him, we believe that to be the case, but any time a team is not performing I think you have to look at all options.”

Not all of the Red Sox coaches were let go. The pitching department was largely spared and assistant hitting coach John Soteropulos was the only member of the hitting group retained. Breslow said when it came to deciding who should stay and who should go that he tried to evaluate what he believed would best position the group to be successful, and that the pitching in particular has shown signs of improvement.

“I have confidence in the pitching group’s ability to turn that around,” Breslow said. “I think we’ve seen evidence of that with Ranger (Suarez) and with Garrett (Crochet) and have full confidence in that group to be able to get us on track.”

As for the status of former game planning coach Jason Varitek, who the club initially announced would be reassigned to a new role, Breslow said conversations about his future are ongoing but that he’ll no longer be in uniform on the field.

“We’re still working through that and having conversations,” Breslow said. “Obviously Tek is an incredibly meaningful and important and revered member in this organization who has a ton of respect from me, but I think those conversations are best handled in private.”

At the end of the day, Breslow said responsibility for the club’s performance ultimately lies with him, and he acknowledged that the position player group as currently constructed is challenging to manage, something he said he admitted to Cora during their conversation.

But he also believes this team can still reach the postseason, and he felt it was best to take decisive action early rather than wait until it might be too late.

“I don’t think our goals have changed,” Breslow said. “We talked all offseason, all spring training about building a team that could compete for the division and make it to the postseason.”

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