That’s one!
The Cincinnati Reds fired manager David Bell on Sunday evening, calling time on his tenure at the helm of the club just a week before the end of his 6th season in charge. The Reds won 409 games under his command, lost 455, and watched him get ejected approximately 944 times in that span.
Freddie Benavides will man the ship for the remainder of the season, per reports.
MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon was among many who helped relay the news.
Breaking news: The Reds have fired David Bell as their manager. Bench coach Freddie Benavides will be interim manager for Cincinnati’s final five games. Story to come soon on MLB . com and Reds . com
— Mark Sheldon (@m_sheldon) September 23, 2024
I’d love to be fired up by this.
I’d love to think this was the start of a house-cleaning that would allow this floundering franchise to cleanse itself of its malaise and get a fresh perspective from outside.
I’d love to imagine that Bell was the issue here in the first place.
None of that is coarsing through these veins, however.
Bell was nondescript, in part because the clubs he was given were nondescript. Every time they needed X, Y, and Z, the front office in charge gave him T, U, and V. The plan, if you read the tea leaves, was for T, U, and V to simply play one letter better than they ever had before, and – shocker – none of that ever happened under Bell with any consistency.
Did Jeimer Candelario turn into a breakout star at age 30 to make his imprint as the big free agent bat pan out? No.
Did the Reds decision to eschew signing an outfielder last winter and, instead, simply try to turn an infielder and a couple cast-offs into a regular platoon rotation work out at all? No.
Did the front office ever pivot to a short-term strategy to help Bell out when their long-term plan resulted in copious injury and underperformance? No.
Bell worked few miracles while in charge. Few, if any, managers ever do. For that I do not fault him one bit. However, the front office of the Reds and their commitment to simply putting together a B- squad and hoping something breaks their way never came to fruition under Bell (shocker), and now it’s time they plied their trade with someone else for a change, if for no reason other than posterity’s sake.
Speaking of which…
Miami Marlins manager Skip Schumaker is on the Reds’ radar for potential replacement for David Bell, who’s fired Sunday night.
— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) September 23, 2024
My god.