That's the word on the street in Cincinnati, as confirmed by both the Cincinnati Enquirer and FOX Sports. Both outlets have sources claiming that Dusty Baker has interviewed with the club and is emerging as one of the top contenders.
You really can't argue with his resume: he's a three-time NL Manager of the Year and has had playoff success, even if he doesn't have a World Series ring to show for it. Plus, the Reds have a stable of promising young pitchers just waiting to have their arms destroyed. (Unsolicited fantasy advice: if you're in a keeper league, start taking offers now for Aaron Harang, Bronson Arroyo and Homer Bailey ...)
I kind of feel bad for Pete Mackanin, who did an admirable job as interim manager after Jerry Narron was canned halfway through the year. Granted, the Reds still finished the year in fifth place, but they went a respectable 41-39 under Mackanin. If he could get the Reds to perform like that over a full season, they'd be within sniffing distance of a playoff berth (remember, this is the NL Central that we're talking about).
Interim manager has got to be a tough gig. If you're taking over for a fired manager, chances are pretty good you're inheriting a pretty crappy team. They're then left with a pretty small sample size of a season to prove that they're good enough to keep the job. If they finish strong, expectations are often too high. If they finish badly, they can be unfairly pushed out the door. Pete Mackanin is in such a position in Cincy right now. He wants to lose the interim tag, but only if the Reds think he deserves it and not because of the Reds' torrid play since he took the job:
"I feel like I'm in the mix, and I feel like I'm doing as much as I can to help my chances," he said. "I wouldn't want them to have a knee-jerk reaction to that. If and when they do hire me, I'll feel real good about it, instead of just as a reaction.
"I don't think (CEO) Bob Castellini's like that. I think he's going to think long and hard. That's fine with me. I don't want the job on a whim or a knee-jerk reaction because we play well for a week or two."
Mackanin may have trouble keeping his job just because of the bad track record of elevated interims of late. Sam Perlozzo and Jerry Narron, both fired this year, started out as interim managers. The man Narron replaced, Dave Miley, also started as the Reds' interim manager. It's possible new owner Bob Castelinni will just want a chance to start things over and I don't think anyone would blame him if he did, even with how the Reds have played under Mackanin.
As you can see, there's still no pictures of Mackanin in Reds' uniform on Getty. Maybe they're trying to tell Castelinni something.
"I can't say enough good things about Jerry Narron ... we had a very close, professional relationship, and I can't say enough about the guy in terms of the positive personal qualities that he possesses,'' Krivsky said in a noon news conference today at Great American Ball Park.
[...]
"It comes down to the performance of the team,'' said an emotional Krivsky. "I share in that. But being the manager, you've got the direct responsibility there handling the team on a day-to-day basis."
Krivsky said he shares in the responsibility in putting the team together.
"A big part of me feels responsible,'' he said. ""I feel bad that I wasn't able to shore up the team a little bit better for Jerry and the staff to work with. It really bothers me.''
Ahh, so this was the classic "I can't fire myself and I gotta fire someone" move from Krivsky. I will say this, it's a strange move to bring Pete Mackanin in and have him be the interim manager. Usually they just move someone already on the coaching staff up into the interim position with the intention of hiring from outside later. Mackanin was the advanced scout for the club, meaning he wasn't already in the dugout. On one hand, naming an interim may suggest they're interested in someone that's not currently available, on the other hand it might just mean they want someone else to manage the team and haven't thought a lot about it yet.
If you're curious, that's Mackanin above. I thought I'd do the Reds' fans that wanted to see what their new manager looked like a favor. And I can never resist using an Expos picture.
According to the Cincy Post's C. Trent Rosecrans, Jerry Narron has been fired as the Reds' manager and Pete Mackanin will replace him on an interim basis. Rosecrans' post is on his own blog (a blog breaks the news, hooray for Internet 2.0!) and it's pretty short on details at the moment.
Regardless of the details, Narron's been on the hot seat for a while now as the Reds' have failed to match the play that got them to 80-82 and within 3.5 games of the eventual world champion Cardinals. Rumors swirled yesterday that Tony La Russa would be interested in the Reds' job after his contract is up with the Cardinals this year. This is actually Pete Mackanin's second interim managing gig within the division, as he took over for Lloyd McClendon for the balance of the 2005 season when he got a pink slip late in the year. I'm rather doubtful he's the guy the Reds want for the long term, though that's nothing but speculation on my part at the moment. Of course, that's what happens when a manager gets fired. Let the speculation begin!
This makes Narron the third manager to go in a pretty short span after Mike Hargrove stepped down this afternoon and Sam Perlozzo was fired less than two weeks ago. Who's next to go? My guess would be Joe Torre.
Bernie Miklasz writes in his Bernie's Bits for the St Louis Post-Dispatch that there are rumblings that Cardinals GM Walt Jocketty and manager Tony LaRussa could be headed out of St. Louis to Cincinnati.
Cardinals GM Walt Jocketty has a year left on his contract, but if for whatever reason he asks out after this season, there's a growing buzz in baseball circles that he could end up in Cincinnati. Reds owner Bob Castellini, who used to be part of the Cardinals' ownership group, admires Jocketty. Interestingly, on Friday's FSN broadcast, Al Hrabosky said something about Tony La Russa also going to Cincinnati.
Quite an interesting bit there. Rumors are rumors but this one gives Reds fans at least a little bit to talk about. It makes some sense here in the 'Nati as Reds fans are furious that neither GM Wayne Krivsky or manager Jerry Narron has lost their job .... or even had their jobs threatened. Narron is about as hated as anyone can be around here ... and Krivsky's trades of 2006 have turned out to have really sucked. Also, the expected fire-sale from the Reds has yet to start.
If I asked you to guess who the worst team in baseball is, you'd probably guess either the Nationals or the Royals. You'd be right with either of those guesses, but those aren't the only right answers. There's one more team that can join those lowly depths... the Cincinnati Reds. Something about this passage from John Fay's write-up of the game makes me laugh sadly on the inside:
A major beat-down - by a team widely picked to lose 100 games - before a crowd of 31,971 on Bronson Arroyo Bobblehead Night is not what the marketing department had in mind.
All this came after CEO Bob Castellini addressed the team before the game.
"He was very encouraging, very positive, short and to the point," Reds manager Jerry Narron said.
Very little positive happened on the field.
"Fire Narron!" chants could be heard in the seventh inning. They came just after Todd Coffey allowed back-to-back home runs to make it 9-1.
It's probably the Pirate fan in me empathizing with the Reds' fans. But yeah, the Reds' ship is sinking fast. I could try to pinpoint what's going wrong for them, but it would be along the lines of everything except for Ken Griffey Jr., Adam Dunn, and Bronson Arroyo. That's not really pinpointing a problem, that's just saying, "Yeah, the Reds really seem to suck a lot right now." Of course, it would be the truth, so I don't suppose there's really anything wrong with that.
Before the season, some Reds fans were concerned that Edwin Encarnacion's poor defense would keep his bat out of the starting lineup on a daily basis. Well, EE was hitting .218/.301/.287 coming into today and after making two errors yesterday, he was shipped down to AAA Nashville before this afternoon's game. That doesn't mean the Reds are happy about doing it. Here's Jerry Narron in the Cincy Enquirer:
"It's disappointing," Reds manager Jerry Narron said. "We were expecting him to come in here and progress from where he was a year ago....
"We were really expecting big things from him. It just hasn't happened yet. ... He's got to go down there with the right attitude, work hard, play well and come back here and be a big part of what we're going to do in the future."
Ryan Freel started at third base Thursday and figures to get the bulk of playing time there with Keppinger and Juan Castro expected to contribute at the position.
It's pretty easy to see why the Reds are so disappointed. Encarnacion hit .276/.359/.473 while taking the brunt of the playing time at third as a 23-year-old last year. From the same article, Wayne Krivsky doesn't expect him to stay down long, and thinks it'll help wake him up and help him focus. But this could have a pretty negative effect on a young guy that thought he was the future of the franchise at the third base position.
The Cincinatti Reds are leading the NL Central (OK, so they're barely .500, but whatever it takes, right?), and could be preparing for their annual early-season division ownership before they collapse in July.
Reds manager Jerry Narron did not see Edwin Encarnacion stand in the batter's box while his popup sailed to shallow right field Wednesday night.
"You know something I was not watching Eddie," Narron said. "I was watching the ball. I saw Eddie come in here with his bat. I came down here and looked it (on video). He did not run."
So Narron did something you rarely see in the big leagues: He sent Juan Castro out to replace Encarnacion in the bottom of the second.
"Eddie told me he did not see the ball," Narron said. "You've still got to run. I don't care if we lose every game. We're not going to play guys who don't hustle. Simple as that. I told them from Day 1. We'll pinch-hit pitchers. We'll play pitchers. If you cannot hustle, you cannot play. Simple as that."
Good for Narron for attempting to give his players a little motivation, but as one commenter on the Baseball Primer Newsblog says: hustle ain't exactly the Reds' biggest problem. Bigger problems would be roster management and talent development, and if the Reds don't fix those things over the long term, they'll have more trouble than just Edwin Encarnacion crapping out on a routine pop fly.
Josh Hamilton almost threw his career and perhaps his life away due to drug addition. He was out of baseball for almost four years before re-emerging for 16 games in Single-A last year. If you weren't familiar with him before he made the Reds' Opening Day roster this year, it's difficult to put into context just how big of a prospect he once was -- he was being called the next Ken Griffey, Jr., and that was back when Griffey was still arguably the best player in the game.
In any case, Hamilton's story keeps getting better. Reds fans have latched onto his comeback story, giving him a standing ovation when he made his long-awaited major league debut with a pinch-hit appearances on Opening Day. Reds skipper Jerry Narron thought about giving Hamilton a start this afternoon, and though he ultimately decided not to you have to figure that first start is just around the corner. Heck, even his endorsements are coming back:
Hamilton re-signed with Nike to wear its shoes, wrist bands and batting gloves. He had been with the company but had his contract terminated after he was suspended for drug violations.
"We talked to them early in the spring," he said. "They weren't interested. But then I started having a good spring and they were."
Because he was drafted out of high school, he's still only 25 years old. Had he kept his nose clean (literally), he probably would be entering at least his third year in the majors, but it's still entirely conceivable that he'll wind up having a long and fruitful big-league career. Considering what he's overcome, that's damn impressive. (via Ben Maller)
Reds center fielder Ryan Freel made an amazing catch Tuesday, but he paid a price for it. As he ran down Aaron Rowand's deep fly ball to left-center field at Bright House Network Field, he crashed head-first into the wall to make the catch.
He stayed in the game and finished the inning, but he suffered from spasms in his back and he left the game and returned to Sarasota.
So what does Narron have to say now?
"He hit the wall pretty hard," Reds manager Jerry Narron said. "It was a wonderful play, and he's going to make a lot of plays like that this summer. I know when he hit the wall, he was pretty sore. We'll see how he is in the morning."
Umm, Jerry? I think you're only encouraging him to keep running headlong into walls in meaningless games. Seems like a bad idea. Everyone makes a big deal about Freel in center as opposed to somewhere else and how that's more dangerous for him, but let's face it- baseball fields are surrounded with fencing. No matter where Freel plays it's only a matter of time before he runs straight into some of it.
That's the word on the street in Cincinnati, as confirmed by both the Cincinnati Enquirer and FOX Sports. Both outlets have sources claiming that Dusty Baker has interviewed with the club and is emerging as one of the top contenders.
Interim manager has got to be a tough gig. If you're taking over for a fired manager, chances are pretty good you're inheriting a pretty crappy team. They're then left with a pretty small sample size of a season to prove that they're good enough to keep the job. If they finish strong, expectations are often too high. If they finish badly, they can be unfairly pushed out the door. 
Last night the details on 
According to the Cincy Post's C. Trent Rosecrans, 
Bernie Miklasz writes in his 
If I asked you to guess who the worst team in baseball is, you'd probably guess either the Nationals or the Royals. You'd be right with either of those guesses, but those aren't the only right answers. There's one more team that can join those lowly depths... the Cincinnati Reds. Something about this passage from 
Before the season, some Reds fans were concerned that Edwin Encarnacion's poor defense would keep his bat out of the starting lineup on a daily basis. Well, EE was hitting .218/.301/.287 coming into today and after making two errors yesterday, he was shipped down to AAA Nashville before this afternoon's game. That doesn't mean the Reds are happy about doing it. Here's 
The Cincinatti Reds are leading the NL Central (OK, so they're barely .500, but whatever it takes, right?), and could be preparing for their annual early-season division ownership before they collapse in July. 
Josh Hamilton almost threw his career and perhaps his life away due to drug addition. He was out of baseball for almost four years before re-emerging for 
About a week ago 
