Did anyone make it down to Great American Ball Park for last night’s series opener against Milwaukee? I was wondering if there was an enormous “Mission Accomplished” banner hanging in a prominent spot at the ol’ ball yard. Because Cincinnati’s front office has finally executed their plan to perfection, and they deserve to take a victory lap.
Before we get to that, let’s discuss last week’s trade of closer Alexis Diaz to the Dodgers for minor league pitcher Mike Villani. Diaz was one of the most electrifying pitchers in recent Reds history, but his stock had dropped so far that the Reds felt forced to trade him at his lowest-ever value in exchange for a player who was selected in the 13th round of last year’s draft. It was a disappointing end to a once-promising Reds career whose high point was an All-Star nod less than two seasons ago.
We can argue about the trade return or the optics or whether Cincinnati should have kept trying to rebuild his value, since Diaz was under team control for three more seasons. But even the harshest critic of the Reds front office has to concede that there is a reasonable argument for cutting bait. Diaz lost oomph on his once-dazzling fastball (now averaging right at 93 mph; it was over 96 mph during his All-Star season), and he’s been utterly unable to keep the ball inside the strike zone. His walk rate in Triple-A is 17.1 percent, and his ERA in six games with the Reds this year was 12.00. Oof.
All that comes after a near-disastrous 2024 in which his ERA of 3.99 didn’t necessarily shock the conscience but nearly all of his peripheral numbers went in the tank. For example, Diaz’s strikeout rate cratered to 8.8 per nine innings from a mark of 11.5 in his rookie season. This wasn’t just a case of Cincinnati giving up after a couple of rough months. Diaz is nothing more than a project at this point, a lottery ticket for the Dodgers, who will be hoping they can catch the same lightning in a bottle that the Blue Jays (Jeff Hoffman) and Yankees (Luke Weaver) have enjoyed after acquiring under-performing Reds relievers.
Of course, because this is Cincinnati, these reasons weren’t the only ones cited as drivers of the decision to trade Diaz. They also had to talk about money—because everything around the Reds organization is driven by money decisions.
Here’s what Reds President of Baseball Operations Krall had to say immediately after the trade: “He’s in Triple-A, and we have other guys we have brought up ahead of him. He wasn’t going to be brought up tomorrow. We felt like it was the right time to make this move. We ended up clearing a roster spot. We can reallocate some of the resources. We got a pitcher back that we like.”
Read that again: “We can reallocate some of the resources.” If one of the primary reasons Cincinnati needed to make this trade was to free up resources, then this club is in worse shape than we previously knew. Over the winter, the Reds and Diaz avoided an arbitration hearing by agreeing to a $4.5 million contract. The Dodgers are going to be on the hook for Diaz’s salary the rest of the season, a total of around $2.95 million.
Yep, we’re talking about fewer than $3 million. That’s a lot to you and me, but it’s peanuts to a professional sports franchise. You’d never hear another team’s spokesman cite a number so puny as justification for trading a former All-Star. But we’re in Cincinnati, where that amount evidently moves the needle. It’s low-key embarrassing.
But perhaps you want to be optimistic. Maybe you don’t want to see this as Krall “align(ing) our payroll to our resources.” Your glass is half-full, and you want to believe that the Reds will use those additional resources, all $2.95 million, to provide some flexibility at the trade deadline. Maybe they’ll go out and get a bat to help this struggling lineup, and now they have a little money to pay for that bat. Maybe. I certainly hope so!
Listen, I’m all for unbridled optimism in the face of any actual evidence whatsoever, and if that’s you then go for it. I’m not the fan police. But I am having a hard time forgetting the 2023 trade deadline, when the Reds were in first place and refused to improve the team at all.
Besides literally all available evidence from recent history, there’s a bigger reason I don’t think you should trust the Reds to try to improve the team at the trade deadline. I think Krall has already put together precisely the type of team the ownership group wants. The Reds are just good enough to pretend to be in the pennant race (in a watered-down playoff structure) and so maybe a few people will still stumble through the turnstiles. And ownership hasn’t had to pay any money for, you know, an actually competitive roster. It’s The Ideal Castellini Club (™). Krall has been a smashing success!
Remember when then-GM Krall famously declared that his strategy was to “eliminate peaks and valleys” for the Redlegs? “We’re trying to eliminate peaks and valleys, that’s where we need to go,” he said. “We need to figure out how to continue to build through our player pipeline, player development and scouting. That’s got to be the base of everything we do. If that’s the base, that’s how we’ll build long-term success and sustainable success.”
Three years later, it’s clear that Krall’s plan has been executed to perfection. He’s given his bosses exactly what they asked for. As evidence, I present this tidbit of information recently shared by Reds beat writer Mark Sheldon on social media:
How about this .500 madness? From MLBN research… The Reds have a 29-29 overall record, 15-15 on the road, 14-14 at home, and 15-15 against teams .500 or better. They’re 5-5 in their last 10 games, 10-10 in the last 20, and 20-20 in their last 40! Within the NL Central? They’re also .500 at 9-9.
That’s the perfect distillation of eliminating peaks and valleys that I can imagine. Just complete and utter equilibrium. There is balance in the force. Mission accomplished!
This is who the Reds are and who they want to be. If you were expecting more in Year 12 of The Never-Ending Rebuild, perhaps that’s on you.
Chad Dotson helms Reds coverage at Cincinnati Magazine and is co-author of “The Big 50: The Men and Moments That Made the Cincinnati Reds,” revised, updated, and available in bookstores now. His newsletter about Cincinnati sports can be found at chaddotson.com. Hear him guesting on the We Love Our Team podcast.
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