With the July 31 trade deadline not far away, Red Sox manager Alex Cora was asked what he thinks the team needs.

"I have my feelings," he said. "They change on a daily basis. But one thing for sure, having Jarren Duran (outfielder), Tanner (Houck, pitcher) here already, Chris (Sale, injured pitcher) whenever he comes here, and hopefully some of those kids that have been battling injuries throughout the season, we're going to be in good shape.

"Every team has question marks. Every team needs to add something to get better. I just look around and look at the standings and there are a lot of teams in contention."

Cora said he's thrown some names around with members of the Sox' front office. Chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom has made it clear that Cora is heavily involved in roster decisions.

"Sometimes it's not the huge move that helps you win the World Series," Cora said. "It's getting Steve Pearce and all of a sudden he becomes a hero. Good teams, they benefit from good baseball moves, and I do believe we're going to make some good baseball moves. And if Chaim feels like it, we're going to improve."

While Bloom has yet to make what most would consider to be a "huge acquisition" in his two years in Boston, he has a chance to do that this summer.

"I don't think you need a savior, to be honest with you," Cora said. "But sometimes there's a few things that you need to get better. It doesn't have to be — just to throw a name — back in the day, a Gary Sheffield type of guy. Sometimes Ian Kinsler and Steve Pearce, they do the trick, right? It's just, different teams have different needs.

"I think the fanbase, they're the ones that, they get very high or very low depending on who you get. At the end of the day, you have to play the game and you know what you need to win ballgames and the pieces you need to keep getting better. That's the way I see it. I don't think it has that affect in the clubhouse as much as people think."

The 2019 Red Sox never received any acquisitions at the deadline, with former boss Dave Dombrowski deciding it wasn't a team worth investing in. They finished with 84 wins.

"Well, I mean, sometimes the players have an idea, the coaching staff has another one and the front office has another one," Cora said. "We felt we were playing OK, right, but you saw what happened after that. We didn't lose against Tampa and the Yankees because we didn't add a big name. We just didn't play well.

"Timing is everything, right? We were coming from a week that, we beat Tampa two out of three, then we beat the Yankees three out of four, but I think that Sunday game kind of like dictated a lot to where we were.

"The previous year, we sweep them, and we just keep going. That one, the Sunday game we lost (in 2019), and then we had an off day, and it just didn't have that feeling. I don't want to say we weren't close to those teams, but there was a lot of stuff missing that year, and I think it started with health. I don't think, because we didn't trade for a big name, was the reason we lost seven or eight in a row. We just didn't play good baseball."