Guest TML: Cincinnati Reds' rebuild is right where it should be

Did you hear? The NFL Draft was last night. However, we’re not talking about the NFL Draft today. You want to know why we aren’t talking about the draft? Because we are Cincinnati People. And Cincinnati People know what they know. We know all about the dystopian dysfunction that goes by the name Cincinnati Bengals. We’ve chronicled it before. We won’t waste time this morning. The Cliff Notes version of that dysfunction takes all of five words:

Marvin. Lewis. Two-year. Extension.

No, we will talk baseball instead, because as my muse reminds me, “It’s #$@&%*! baseball season!”

I can see you rolling your eyes. Conventional wisdom says the Reds are little different than those beleaguered Bengals. Bad ownership. Nepotistic front office. Little desire to win.

Is that true, though?

Doc has chronicled our cynicism, a cynicism that wears like a well-worn coat. It keeps our fragile hearts relatively safe and warm from the heartbreak of Super Bowl wins slipping away in the final moments, hardball playoff victories disappearing faster than a Mat Latos fastball returned to the upper deck, or two amateur bouncy-ball seasons ending with the sudden and sickening thud of an under-inflated Spaulding meeting the hardwood floor – in the same building, on the same night, no less.

In truth, this whole rebuild thing is new to us. Once-upon-a-time, baseball seasons began with real hope. Your team might be lacking talent, but they didn’t strip the clubhouse down to the rails. They didn’t take your hope away in April and tell you to come back with your heart three or four seasons hence.

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When the Reds were swept by the Washington Nationals to begin the season, you could see it coming. Of the three starters the Reds faced, one was the reigning Cy Young award winner and the other two had Cy Young bona fides of their own. Hell, it was like giving Secretariat a 10-yard head start.

But, the losing continued and those damn injuries – the Reds’ ever-present companion – slid back into the passenger seat for the long road down Route 162. The finger-pointing has begun anew. Paul’s interview with Bob Castellini and some of his confounding comments have people harkening back to the salad days of Marge Schott, a comparison no owner of a baseball team should ever wish upon himself.

If you, gentle reader, agree with nothing else here today, you must agree with this: we’ve lost all perspective here at the Ballpark Down by the River. We are just a little too close to the carnage. That’s when I go looking for a point-of-view removed from those with the heart of a spurned lover. Baseball writer Grant Brisbee talked about our Reds in a fashion most of us cannot or will not – dispassionately. If you can ignore the fact that he roots for a team that has won entirely too many World Series titles lately and was party to the most ignominious collapse in recent playoff history, his words offer a rare dose of common sense and clarity about the Reds and their tenuous rebuild. He doesn’t mince words. He lays out where the Reds have failed. Then, he goes on:

“Somehow, though, the Reds weren’t set back 10 years. They quietly pilfered young talent from other teams and through their own system. Luis Castillo was gifted to them for Dan Straily … They started to develop an almost – dare I say it? – Cardinals-like ability to mold young hitters into something worthwhile. Adam Duvall became an unlikely all-star, Scooter Gennett morphed into someone who could hit a ball way farther than anyone named Scooter should, Eugenio Suarez went from a moderately intriguing organizational player to someone with star potential.

So even though they whiffed on a lot of their rebuilding trades, the rebuild is still going strong. They’ve used their screw-it freedom wisely, introducing the world to players like Jesse Winker and other auto-generated names from MLB: The Show. They’ve done so much right. They’ve done so very much right.”

THEY’VE DONE SO VERY MUCH RIGHT. Well, those are words you won’t hear down around Fort Washington Way. You certainly won’t hear them on the local airwaves. Oh sure, they’ve done much that has turned out to be wrong. They allowed themselves to get stuck with a recalcitrant Brandon Phillips, the party guest who refused to leave at 2 a.m. As Brisbee notes, they traded Todd Frazier when baseball was flush with third basemen. They held on to the Cuban Missile too long.

All that takes us back to Paul’s interview with Owner Bob. For most of what the Reds have done wrong might very well lay at the feet of Mr. Castellini. Well-meaning and passionate, he is. Candid about what goes on during those decision-making meetings? I dunno.

Statements like “I do not get overly involved in our operations’’ are belied by the sentence that immediately precedes: “If I don’t get a lot of opposition, we make the decision based on what I say.”

I’ve been accused of being an apologist for the front office; that I sleep in my rose-colored glasses. I just blog. I have no insider information. If you want insights into what’s happening behind the scenes, Doc and John Fay will clue you in long before I find out about it on Twitter. So, if I’m loathe to blame Walt Jocketty, or now, Dick Williams for decisions that look curious or flat out stupid, it’s because I hate being wrong. I’m silly that way. Yes, I’d put Amir Garrett into the starting rotation tomorrow. But maybe they know something I don’t. Maybe the lessons of a young, perpetually injured Johnny Cueto are fresh in the mind. Maybe they want to make sure Garrett has a fully-recovered hip to go along with that steely stage presence.

So much of what has gone wrong has happened because of the refusal to host the All-Star game without hometown all-stars. So like Brandon Phillips, Frazier and Chapman overstayed their welcome. It’s hard not to think that’s the way Bob Castellini wanted it.

Rebuilds are a relatively new phenomenon. We don’t talk about the legendary Big Red Machine rebuild because that’s not how it was done. The New Math is driving this now. Myths we need to dispense with include:

Myth #1: The Rebuild Has Taken Forever. Nope. We’re only in the third year. Go look at the Astros’ timeline.

Myth #2: There’s Not Enough Talent. No. Nick Senzel and Jesse Winker are as good as gold. Eugenio Suarez is coming on in a big way. Tyler Mahle can get people out in the big leagues. Luis Castillo is the real deal. Sal Romano is growing into his role very nicely.

Myth #3: Bob Castellini is Cheap. Really? The guy who signed the best hitter in Reds franchise history to a $225M contract? The guy who showered Brandon Phillips with too much money because he wanted to prove to the fan base he was serious about winning? The Reds aren’t spending now. That’s by design. Why sign an expensive starting pitcher in a season that at best might have looked like a .500 finish? Castellini didn’t let Zack Cozart go because he was too expensive. He let him go because he was too expensive for a SS on the wrong side of 30 who was coming off an outlier season and wasn’t going to be a part of the next good team. Whew. There’s money being spent at the organizational level that may not be sexy, but it’s money well-spent nonetheless; and it’s at the heart of what good organizations do, like the, um … St. Louis Cardinals. Scouting and development cost dolla bills, too.

Myth #4: The Reds Should Go Get Joe Girardi. Good god, no. I live in New York. Here’s the reason Girardi was fired, despite a surprisingly good season in the Bronx: “... the overriding reason that Cashman soured on Girardi was the "connectivity and communication" issue with players, which was a concern to the GM as the Yankees move into their next phase of their youth movement …”

And you want him managing a young Reds team? No. Thanks.

Myth #5: Dick Williams as GM is Shortsighted Nepotism. If I were a young man looking for a job in a baseball front office, I would agree. But, I’m not and you aren’t either. Yes, he’s an insider. He’s also an outsider. He came from the private equity world. He doesn’t see things from a purely Old School point of view. That’s already paying dividends.

It’s been painful. The primrose path to relevance has been strewn with injuries and other baseball hobgoblins. All is not lost. One more dispassionate quote from Brisbee:

“The Reds, then, are an example of what happens when a team gets half of the rebuild right. That is, nothing happens. Nothing good, at least. Not without money. The Cubs also got half of a rebuild right, with their last outstanding homegrown pitcher being Kerry Wood, give or take. But they spent and spent and looked under rocks and dusted some thrift-store finds off, and it got them their first championship in 7,000 years. They were capable of augmenting their inherent advantages with money and creativity.”

The Reds will have to do that – and then some. Theo Epstein spent 4 seasons rebuilding, then poured $495M of his owner’s money into patching the holes that remained. The Reds will spend money when the time is right. They won’t, however, spend THAT kind of money.

There’s a theory out there that you draft your everyday eight, and go out and buy the pitching, letting someone else do the developing of fragile arms. I don’t think the Reds can do that. They need to make another smart trade like the one that netted them the likes of a once-healthy Anthony DeSclafani, then develop the pitching prospects already here. Cincinnati cannot afford to give Clayton Kershaw a bank on the Banks – only to see his back give out. It’s too much risk for a small-ish market team to take on, even if Forbes’ valuation is right.

If you’re a baseball fan, you stick with this team. Because the jury is still out and the people running things are smarter than you think.

If not, well, kickball is coming to the West Side, I hear.