John Fay thinks it might have been:
I've got a feeling something big is going to happen on the Reds front soon.Monday is an off day - a perfect time to have a press conference.
No one has told me anything definitive. But I know this much: There have been a lot of high-level meetings going on lately.
The most obvious thing for a team in the Reds' position to do is to fire the manager.
The Reds are having lots of "high level meetings". That doesn't really inspire confidence for some reason.
A couple of other interesting tidbits:
He's made some moves that have hurt him in the clubhouse. He benched Edwin Encarnacion for not running out a ball in April. But when Josh Hamilton did the same thing in June, it went unpunished. But not unnoticed by the players.
And I see a lot of fear that Narron would simply be replaced by Bucky Dent, but Fay doesn't think that's what would happen:
If the Reds should make a move with Narron, first base coach Billy Hatcher is the best choice to manage in the interim. Hatcher doesn't have managerial experience.But he has the best relationship with Ken Griffey Jr. and Adam Dunn, the players with the most influence among the position players.
Hatcher is definitely the way to go. I'm beyond sick of bringing in guys who have a history of failure elsewhere like Bob Boone and Jerry Narron, or a guy like Dave Miley who's main selling point seemed to be a willingness to work on the cheap just to have the opportunity to manage.
The last two guys to manage the Reds who had a clue were Davey Johnson and Jack McKeon, and perhaps not coincidentally the Reds were actually halfway decent when they had good managers.
Firing Jerry Narron isn't really going to solve anything, but he is absolutely part of the problem. Not as big a part of the problem as Krivsky's inability to identify what good pitching looks like, but a pretty big problem nonetheless. Hopefully Fay is right about something for once, and tomorrow we'll see Billy Hatcher announced as the new Cincinnati Reds manager.
Update [2007-7-1 22:0:15 by boobs]: Thanks to BubbaFan, who was relentlessly trolling the blogs, we have learned from the Cincy Post that Narron is out, and a man named Pete Mackanin is in. More to come, I'm sure.