Extending Alex Cora is big step toward Craig Breslow making Red Sox his. The next comes at the deadline.

Craig Breslow and his bosses will be pilloried if they don't act at the trade deadline and give the Red Sox some help.

This season for the Red Sox sickos was having an extended moment. Twenty-one wins in 30 games going into the All-Star break. Kyle Teel lighting up the Futures Game. Roman Anthony overpowering the Skills Showcase. Jarren Duran, MVP of the big show.

Carried away? For sure. Following a sports team is an act of wanting to believe — in the players, in the management, in the success around the corner. Most everything can have a silver lining if you want it to, and, well, usually you do.

Getting kicked around in Colorado while Kevin Millar is twanging about on the NESN broadcast? Not much precious metal in that mess, down to that four-error, 20-7 disaster on Wednesday featuring Cal Quantrill reminding Reese McGuire of past indiscretions.

The consolation was Alex Cora being convinced to forgo free agency, taking a three-year extension that makes him the game’s second highest-paid manager at a reported $7.25 million/year. From the outside, it felt like a lightning bolt, the perception across the industry since the spring being Cora wanted to peruse the open market.

And that the Red Sox, living in their Broke Mr. Monopoly era, would never truly compete to keep him.

“I’ve been talking to Craig [Breslow] for a little bit here,” Cora told reporters Wednesday afternoon, referencing the Red Sox architect of the moment. “There were two things that I wanted: I wanted to win, and I wanted security for my family. And we have accomplished both.”

“In my position, you look for someone who’s a partner in the manager’s seat, someone who can question and challenge when it’s appropriate and do so in a productive way. Who can champion what we’re trying to do as an organization,” said Breslow, who flew to Colorado on Tuesday to finalize the deal. “I’ve seen that happen over the last several months . . . I’m super excited about where we are today and what I think the future holds.”

A game out of a third wild-card, 13 Cooper Criswell starts deep — seven shutout innings at Coors Field is no joke, no matter how bad the Rockies are — and yet, ascendant! Breslow got a standing ovation in the clubhouse Wednesday. He’ll get another if they put him on the video board Friday, when Red Sox-Yankees returns to Fenway feeling like it always should.

Four days to the trade deadline, and the home team just outcompeted the market for someone.

“At some point, we need to stop with the stupid analogies [about picking a lane] and put the turn signal on,” Breslow said Wednesday in Denver. “We’ve played really good baseball for the last few months. We’ve put ourselves in this position where we’re going to look to improve the team.”

Carried away again? Good golly. Go check the secondary ticket market. We’ve come a long way from “ticket and a drink for $35” in two months.

The optimists among you are dreaming again, the recitation of “starting pitcher, relief help, pop against lefties” approaching an incantation at this point. The shutter’s up and business is being done; Randy Arozarena became a Seattle Mariner while you were sleeping.

The pessimists? Signing Cora is a positive leap for a franchise in retreat for five years, but just that. That $7+ million figures to deliver far beyond its price given how well these Sox are playing for a rejuvenated Cora, and buys a whole lot of goodwill from a skeptical fan base. That’s a lot, for less than they’re paying 38-year-old Chris Martin.

Value made the Trevor Story signing make sense for Breslow’s predecessor, Chaim Bloom. It is, to some degree, what made managerial megabucks make sense earlier this week.

A reminder: Value isn’t a dirty word in teambuilding. It’s an ideal, which is why it’s so easily abused by those seeking to hide less noble aims within it. But also, trying to build only by finding value is usually about as successful as trying to time the stock market. Irrationality often reigns, and even the most successful will often lose plenty.

Anyone trying to read whatever happens over the weekend, and up through 6 p.m. Tuesday, needs not look at the above extremes. Baseball’s trade deadlines in the 12-team postseason era are a perennial sellers’ market. Too many mortgage preapprovals darting between too little inventory, in constant fear of forever being an apartment dweller unless they go $80K over asking and waive the inspection.

Breslow has said all the right things, but in the same parameters he’s always spoken in. His words in Colorado weren’t some profound shift, for me. They were a reframed “not trading future wins for now wins,” no matter how rosy the opportunity looks.

“These opportunities have to be reasonable and teams have to like the guys that we are willing to move. All of those things have to line up,” he said Wednesday. “I think given the strength of the system, given areas where we feel good about our depth, that definitely can happen. Currently the conversations we are having now are about helping the team.”

For me, that’s fine. All anyone could reasonably ask for. Elsewhere? He, and his bosses, will be pilloried if they don’t act, even if we all have our favorite “best trade is the one not made” examples. (Jon Lester/Jacoby Ellsbury for Johan Santana in December 2007 is my go-to, even if it’s not a deadline one.)

The decisiveness is where I draw the hope. Yeah, the risk profile of a Cora megadeal is world’s away from a roster player or cashing out on a prospect. But hasn’t our primary complaint for years now been that the chief baseball officer isn’t the one making the calls?

This last week, the manager Breslow inherited became the manager he adopted as his own. This next week, it’s time for him to do the same with the roster, with a massive visit from the vulnerable Yankees in the background.

A Sox season for the sickos? Color a whole bunch of indifferent observers over the winter sweating a mid-summer flu.