It’s the Cincinnati front office that’s behind the latest Reds failure
· Yahoo Sports
There is a giant pile of blame to chuck around for the failures of the 2026 Cincinnati Reds. Just yesterday, for instance, they had the game, series, and bragging rights in the bag against the St. Louis Cardinals with two-out in the Bottom of the 9th only for their centerfielder to – quite literally – fumble the bag, the end result being a devastating loss in a game they’d all but won.
The players simply haven’t been good enough. That’s how you end up 6 games under .500 with an even worse run differential and residing in last place in the division (again). But at some point you have to begin to search deeper for the root of the larger problem, as the Reds have simply been terrible more often than not for three decades running.
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Not just bad, but terrible.
I posed the question to you earlier in the week for the latest edition of MLB Reacts about where the particular blame for this season resides. In a result that is only moderately surprising to those who voted for the silo that finished runner-up in this week’s exit polls, it’s the front office that you think shoulders the load for the latest last place foibles.
47% of you think that the group spearheaded by Nick Krall and Brad Meador is to blame, and it’s hard to argue. They’re the ones that not only sent a Top 10 organizational prospect to the Pittsburgh Pirates for Ke’Bryan Hayes and his chronically bad back, they’re also the ones that decided to take on the full $36 million still owed to him despite their perpetually tight budgets. They’re also the ones that sunk all their bullpen cash into Pierce Johnson, Caleb Ferguson, and Brock Burke, and the ones who threw Eugenio Suarez $15 million for his immediate decline.
They’re the ones who have seen the products of the 2022 Luis Castillo and Sonny Gray trades simply not materialize at all. They’re also the ones who couldn’t get Elly De La Cruz under long-term contract, officially putting the future of the franchise on short-term notice every day.
Granted, the 33% of voters who put the blame on the ownership group have a pretty good case, too. If the Castellinis and their cronies weren’t so notoriously frugal, maybe Krall & Co. wouldn’t be pressed to try to thread needles on every single move and would have more flexibility to be aggressive.
Either way, it’s telling that 80% of respondents this week think it’s the people pulling the strings who set this team up for disaster, and that’s a pretty accurate endorsement of things.
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