The Cincinnati Reds made a weak start to the 2018 season and recently sacked manager Bryan Price. A permanent successor is not to be found until later. In the meantime, the question arises as to what the next step is and in which direction it is heading. SPOX sheds light on the prospects in Ohio and names potential manager candidates.
The most important feature you need for a large scale rebuild is patience. Only those who have the stamina to survive the exhausting process of reconstruction more or less undamaged.
A kick-out of the manager after a 3-15 start into the season, on the other hand, does not bear witness to this. On the contrary! It seems rushed. There is certainly no one who had predicted an overly successful season for the Reds. A decent performance? Certainly. But no playoffs.
Whoever starts 3-15 and after Ronald Acuna’s debut at 5-19 certainly didn’t have the best start, but it is only the first half of the first month of a long season. Nothing has been lost yet, especially not a potentially respectable season that could help a team that is re-forming itself.
Nevertheless, Bryan Price, the manager since 2014, had to take his hat off. His record: 279-387, a victory rate of 41.9 percent. Under Price, the Reds consistently finished last in the National League Central with the exception of his first season (fourth).
In other words, since Price arrived, the playoffs have been consistently missed. From 2010 to 2013 the Reds still played three times in October, twice even as division champ under success manager Dusty Baker.
But to pin that on Price would be too short-sighted. The Reds have not been on the highest level of personnel for years. Only Joey Votto is left from the last successful period of the team from Ohio. Of course, he still plays at the highest level and was even in the MVP discussion last year – despite being ranked 5th.
However, the present team generally has some major gaps. Apart from the fact that probably nobody has found its form yet, it is noticeable that the troop has considerable problems to get on base. .306’s team OBP speaks volumes. Only four teams are worse in the National League. In pitching terms, with a team ERA of 5.43, you are even in the penultimate place in the league.
So nothing works in this team. And yet there are rays of hope, Rookie Jesse Winker for example. The outfielder knows how to convince. He even started the season so well that he leads the team with a .441 OBP. He is one of those who are supposed to drive the rebuild forward and actually seems to be able to do so.
However, the pressure on Winker is also considerable, because the Reds farm system does not currently have too many top talents. Depending on which scouting experts you ask, the Reds have four to five top 100 talents. Here too, starter Tyler Mahle, who is also already in the squad, but has also shown rather variable performances, and Infielder Nick Senzel, who is currently in Triple-A and will probably make his debut in 2018.
Otherwise, there is already a largely young squad, but in some places it is not necessarily convincing. This is also the main problem in Cincy: The staff is simply not competitive at the moment! Not in a division with the 2016 champion, the Cubs, as well as the Cardinals and Brewers, both of whom have added a lot of personnel in the winter.
Dick Williams, President of Baseball Operations and General Manager, and his team are more in demand here. The good news, however, is that the payroll is among the lowest in the league with currently 101 million dollars on opening day. So there is room for improvement.
But before this can happen, the manager question must first be clarified. But if you believe the statement on Price’s release, this search will probably only be intensified in the autumn. Until then, interim solution Jim Riggleman will use all his experience to steer the riverboat back into calmer waters. At the same time, however, it seems almost unimportant to signal that the 2018 season has already been effectively abandoned in April.
In general, it seems to make sense in every respect to let Riggleman finish the year. As Jim Bowden of The Athletic recently remarked, it would be absurd to install a new manager now, who will almost certainly end the season with over 100 bankruptcies. Nobody really wants to carry this flaw with them. And: The Astros and Cubs, for example, did not celebrate their 100-bankruptcy seasons with their subsequent World Series managers.
100 bankruptcies should now be the minimum goal, however, as there is a lack of width at the top of the farm system, which still ranks eighth this season according to MLB Pipeline. The worse the balance sheet for 2018, the higher the draft pick will be. And especially high first-round picks have usually developed well recently. Just think of people like Bryce Harper, Stephen Strasburg, Kris Bryant or Carlos Correa. This is where the Scouting Department comes in.
As far as manager search in general is concerned, the list of possible candidates is long. The big question will be whether to focus on successful managers who have already proven their qualities, or whether perhaps a fresh face should be the solution after all.
In terms of experience, Joe Girardi and John Farrell would certainly be the first to mention. Both won the World Series as managers and Girardi was also Manager of the Year 2006 with a Marlins team that was also very young and played very convincingly. He was dismissed, however, not because of his abilities, but because the then team owner Jeffrey Loria did not like him.
If you want a blank slate, then Hensley Meulens would be the right choice. The Bench Coach of the Giants was one of the finalists on the Yankees job last winter, is considered an analyst and already led the team of the Netherlands at the last World Baseball Classic.
Or can it be local flair? Then the new Hall-of-Famer Barry Larkin would be the right contact. He played his entire career for the Reds, managed Brazil at WBC 2013 and works as a roving instructor in the Reds’ farm system – he tears from farm team to farm team and helps with the further development of the young players. That, in turn, is the central point of the new Reds: dealing with young players.
The timing of Price’s release seems inappropriate, even hasty. But in any case it is an early signal that 2018 will in principle be a permanent casting for all those involved. However, at least in the front office, the focus is already on 2019 and beyond. But the next shot in every respect really has to be right. Otherwise the rebuild becomes an endless loop.
This article was published without previous view by the Major League Baseball.