Boston Red Sox leadership made a conscious decision to have Craig Breslow — not Alex Cora — ask Rafael Devers about playing first base, and the reason for that has been revealed.

When Boston lost Triston Casas for the season to injury, the club suddenly faced a problematic vacancy at first base. Presumably, Breslow and Cora discussed the next steps, with a Devers move to first emerging as the best option for the team.

Under normal circumstances, the following order of business would have been for the club’s manager (in this case, Cora) to sit down with Devers and explain the situation.

But these weren’t normal circumstances, as is known to any Red Sox fan familiar with both Devers’s personality and the pre-season drama surrounding his move to designated hitter.

With this in mind, Boston’s management decided that Breslow should be the one to speak with Devers, and the exact thinking behind this choice was unveiled in a new report from MassLive’s Chris Cotillo on Friday.

“Initially, it was Breslow — and not Cora — who approached Devers about potentially moving to first base, which led to some questions about communication within the organization,” Cotillo wrote.

“But one industry source recently offered that the strategy was deliberate with the Red Sox purposefully having Breslow — and not Cora — approach Devers about trying first base.”

“The idea, the source said, was that if Devers responded unfavorably to the request — as he quickly did — the long-standing, strong relationship between player and manager wouldn’t be negatively impacted and the team could still have Cora preserve an open line of communication with the club’s highest-paid and longest-tenured member.”

In essence, Breslow was willing to become the “bad cop” to Devers so that Cora could remain the “good cop” if things turned sour (which they did).

Cotillo’s inside scoop is interesting because it shows the importance — and fragility — of a manager’s relationship with his star players.

It should be said that Devers isn’t the typical star, and a more flexible player wouldn’t have required the concoction of such a roundabout plan from Breslow and Cora.

Another key takeaway here is that the Red Sox are clearly making steps to appease Devers, rather than double down on the notion that he’s an employee under contract. Breslow and Cora had every right to demand that Devers play first base, but they went in the other direction — they merely asked him, and they did so with the assumption that they would back off if he said no, which they highly suspected he would.

It’s not the strategy every franchise would have taken, but hey, Devers is absolutely mashing right now, so he should probably just keep DH’ing.

Boston hasn’t been completely fair to Devers this season, and Devers hasn’t been a completely selfless teammate. But if he keeps driving in runs, and the Red Sox start winning, it’ll all be water under the bridge.

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