Another awful start by Bronson Arroyo and another Reds loss were overshadowed by the shocking firing of General Manager Wayne Krivsky Wednesday.
Reds owner Bob Castellini made the call Wednesday morning, naming former Cardinals GM Walt Jocketty as the replacement for Krivsky, who’d been hired in February 2006. Obviously the timing of the move is a little strange; the Reds were just twenty-one games into the 2008 season, and while the bats have yet to awaken for the most part, it’s not like they’re 5-16 or anything. Speculation has the amount of dead money the Reds are paying to people that aren’t even with the team before as being a factor. Others blame the Kearns-Lopez trade with Washington, although that was nearly two full years ago, and it’s time to let that go, man. Krivsky managed to alienate much of the existing front office personnel very early in his tenure, and his seeming lack of people skills may, in the end, have doomed him. The timing of the move is so strange it seems there almost has to be something besides the team’s record causing it.
While the move is oddly timed, the move itself isn’t a complete shocker. Castellini comes from being a part-owner of the Cardinals, and since he brought Jocketty in as a special consultant the whispers have been rampant that he was next in line for the GM seat. I’m a little concerned that Cast is all rhetoric and doesn’t know how to get the results, however. I think he was way too quick on the trigger to dismiss Krivsky. If he was so disturbed by his performance, why did he let him go through the entire offseason as GM? Why did he allow him to expand the payroll if he had no confidence in him? How does the Reds performance in the first 21 games reflect on his performance as GM? If the Reds have the type of owner that has to fire someone after a bad 21-game stretch, I fear this regime will be just as ineffective as Carl Lindner’s, just in a different way. Lindner didn’t care about the team winning as long as he broke even; Cast cares so much he has no patience. This is two straight GMs that were fired before they were even able to see their labors come to fruition, for better or for worse. We’re just now seeing the excellent drafts from the Dan O’Brien era pay dividends, and he’s two GMs ago.
Castellini just keeps saying again, and again, and again that “we’re tired of losing” and “too much losing” and “change the culture” but if kneejerk reactions are going to be the proof of that, I don’t know if the Reds are going to get better any time soon.
On the brighter side, Jocketty knows how to build a market like Cincinnati from his time in St. Louis, and he’s Castellini’s guy, which may mean he’s going to have more rope and more time to make things better. I don’t think 21 games is enough to convince me everything is broken, though.
Day-to-day, though, this move won’t have that much effect in the short term, most likely. It certainly didn’t produce a different result Wednesday from starter Bronson Arroyo, as Houston pounded the Reds, 9-3. Tonight’s start was his worst of the season, a year that could charitably be called “challenging” so far. Bronson didn’t get through the fourth, lasting three and two-thirds innings, allowing ten hits, eight runs (all earned), walking one and striking out five. That, my friends, is getting shelled. Actually watching the game, though, he made some pretty nice pitches, as the strikeouts show, but when he left the ball up he left it way up and over the plate. Houston is not a particularly good-hitting team but any major league team is going to punish mistake after mistake after mistake. Arroyo just doesn’t seem to have a good feel for exactly where the ball is going right now, and when you’re a finesse pitcher it’s hard to get away with poor location in the zone. He lives off his control, and he just doesn’t have it.
Offensively the Reds had a solo shot from Ken Griffey Jr., number 597 on his career. Edwin Encarnacion had another dinger as he is just on fire, and Brandon Phillips had a couple of doubles and looks to be coming out of his funk. Jerry Hairston Jr. had a two-hit day and CP23 had an RBI. Not much else to tell; once again the Reds looked mostly helpless against an average-at-best starter (Chris Sampson) and defused any thought the Reds offense was generally emerging from its funk.
It’s possible that Johnny Cueto’s season has looked all the better because he’s been following Bronson Arroyo in the rotation lately. Hopefully he can turn things around and earn a split with Houston tomorrow afternoon. For the Astronomicals, Jack Cassell makes his first appearance of 2008. I know nothing about him, nor do I want to. I lived in San Diego last year and he started four games for the Padres, not that I follow them any more closely than I do any other non-Reds team. I still have very little recollection of that name. But like it or not, tomorrow there’s gonna be all kinds of Cassell in the house. Like with most weekday afternoon games, I won’t even start watching til at least 8 PM eastern, so it’ll be very old news by the time I get started. I’ll be here anyway, though.
Game time is 12:35 PM Eastern, 9:35 AM here in paradise. Peace.
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