IMO, Pitching coaches do not make very good managers. Baseball is more than just knowing pitching and handling staff's. Yea, select few like Bud Black can succeed for a few years. Price was over his head from the start. I do not blame Price. I blame Reds ownership, GM or whatever Jocketty is calling himself these days. Take a look at Reds Minor league's, they are not very good and a small market team like the Reds must have a decent system to replenish the FA losses every year. This year only one Red farm hand at the futures game and that is Amir Garrett. I always thought Catchers make the best managers as they have to know how to handle pitching staffs, defensive situations, hitting, handling Umpire's, etc. They have to know everything going on the field and off.
Think I mentioned a lot of that already in my other posts in this thread where I stand on assigning the blame to and that is with the upper management. Jock Strap is the President of Baseball Operations and Dick Williams is the GM. Pretty sure GM is just the job title and Jocketty calling all the shots still. Both are jokes but they can only do so much with the cheap skate Bob Castellini. You can build all these damn new features around the stadium every year trying to enhance the fan experience, build new fields in the local community(which is generous) but won't put the money into building a winner in Cincinnati. As I said earlier in my posts, the small market excuse is ********. If you can't afford to keep your team competitive, why did you buy the team? Open it up more business partners if your budget isn't enough. I think it is greed on the owner's part. Carl Lindner was the 133rd richest person in the world when he owned the team during one of the worst stretches in Reds history.
Had injury plagued seasons in 2014-15 and fired Dusty prior to that. They got too impatient with that team which was really talented and at their peak, one of the best in MLB. They decided to have another fire sale and I don't believe it's over yet as I fully expect Bruce to be gone. Maybe Cozart too with the signing of that Cuban Free agent Rodriguez who is not known for his bat. Just what we need. People say what you want about Dusty, he at least had Cincinnati above .500 and in the playoffs 3 of his last 4 years. All of his teams he's managed have gone to the playoffs. The trend of player's managers like Terry Francona, Joe Maddon are cut from the same cloth as a Dusty Baker. While I am not a fan of Price given how he got the job, he can only do as good as the players he has around him. This team is a joke this year and he's dealt with an injury plagued team his whole tenure. Cincinnati obviously decided to head to another rebuilding phase and I don't think it was the job for an inexperienced manager. It took Dusty 2 years from when he got the job in 08 to get the team a winning record that hadn't had a winning season since the year 2000 I believe. I would waiver off the idea of not hiring an inexperienced manager for an ex-Red who would be embraced by the franchise and personality would seem to make a good player's manager. I'm high on that trait as a good team chemistry can go a long way.
Disagree about our farm system being depleted. Peraza/Reed though they're called up right now, for how long who knows. Even Price says they don't know the plan for Peraza whether to try and find big league at bats and squeeze him in when opportunity presents itself or play him exclusively at 2B for consistent at bats in Louisville. Reed likely gets bumped when Bailey returns. Other good prospects within the organization are Ervin, Schebler, Winker, Senzel, Garrett, Travieso, Tyler & Robert Stephenson. A few other that are highly regarded. We've got good prospects in the system here but this stubborn *** management is too conservative with young talent. Been that way for well over a decade, prior to the hiring of Jock Strap. IMO Votto and Frazier were all kept in the minors longer than they should have been, most definitely Frazier was an older rookie. Votto looked prime to go in 06 but they were content riding out the washed up Scott Hatteberg who had a decent year at best. Edwin Encarnacion needs to be thanking his lucky stars he got out before his career got ruined by this organization. He had his good moments in Cincinnati but you'd think what he's doing in Toronto would have happened more often in Cincinnati with the small ballpark. Robert Stephenson is 2-0 in MLB and is kept down at Louisville. Drafting talented players is not the issue, it's a rinse and repeat cycle of getting rid of the talent once they are in a contract year and are too cheap to keep them, so nothing is ever accomplished. It's impossible for any organization that "rebuilds" at the rate this team does to be able to replenish enough prospects just as good to fill the voids left of the quality players they deal each trade deadline/offseason and be ready to jump right in from the word go year after year.