According to CTR:
Steve Smith will not return as the Reds third base coach in 2015, but the rest of Bryan Price's first coaching staff with the Reds is expected to return, the team confirmed on Monday.
Not necessarily a surprising move, as anyone who watched the majority of the team's games can tell you. CTR cites Slyde a few times in his analysis, and it looks like Bryan Price was paying attention to that, too.
During the season, statistician Joel Luckhaupt broke down the outs at home and found 12 of the 28 were on the contact play. Price and Smith both noted that 10 of the 28 were Smith's responsibility, the same number that Luckhaupt found.
That's probably too many of those.
One wrinkle to this that won't be talked about much, will be that hitting coach Don Long will be retained going into next year, despite the Reds' offensive numbers being near the bottom of the league all season. A lot of that regression can be excused due to injury problems, but with a (hopefully) healthy team, I'd think Long should have higher expectations for 2015.
What do you think of the move? Surprised no one else on the coaching staff got the axe?