The Cincinnati Reds hired David Bell prior to the 2019 season. In the six years since then he’s compiled a managerial record of 406 wins and 453 losses. Cincinnati has made the playoffs just once in those six years and it came in 2020 when the team finished 31-29 in the shortened season that saw eight teams reach the playoffs in each league. That season is one of three winning seasons that Bell has had with the Reds. There’s still a chance that this season could be a winning one, but the team will need to go 9-2 or better the rest of the way.
In speaking with Reds.com’s Mark Sheldon, President of Baseball Operations Nick Krall said this of David Bell when asked about the club’s manager and coaches for 2025:
“He’s got a contract for next year,” Krall said when asked about Bell before Friday’s game. “As of right now, we’re going to evaluate everything at the end of the year and see what we have to do to move forward.”
That’s not exactly a great response to hear if you are David Bell or someone on his coaching staff.
The team has not lived up to expectations this season. Some of that is probably due to injuries. But some of it could very well also be attributed to the coaching staff. And while I also believe that it’s entirely fair to say that the front office/ownership is at plenty of fault, too – we’re talking about expectations of the team for 2024 rather than what should be an attempt to put together a team capable of contending for the division, league, etc.
On paper, most of the projection systems had the team around the .500 mark entering the year. It doesn’t seem like they will be getting there unless they go on a big run starting tomorrow night and take it through the next two weeks.
There’s an old saying (particularly in baseball) that a manager is only as good as his players. This writer believes that to mostly be true. You can’t win with a team that simply isn’t good enough. This isn’t football where you can scheme your way around a lack of talent (or at least attempt to). Cincinnati’s front office hasn’t exactly put a good team on the field during the tenure of Bell’s time as manager outside of possibly 2020, and we didn’t exactly get to see how they would play over a full season.
Still, at some point someone is going to be “responsible” for all of the not winning the team has done. Even when the team has had winning seasons, it’s been barely above .500 types of winning. That certainly beats going 62-100 like the club did in 2022, but the goal shouldn’t be to finished 83-79. It should be to make the playoffs and have a team capable of winning a World Series.
The Reds have fallen woefully shy of that over the last decade. How much of that is David Bell and his coaching staff’s fault is a reasonable question. How much of it can be laid at the feet of the front office and ownership is another. But one of those two groups gets to decide who to blame if they choose that someone should be “responsible” and it’s not going to be Bell and the coaches that get to decide that.
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