Reds to hire Jay Bell as bench coach

According to Ken Rosenthal, the Reds may have a new bench coach soon:

Sources: #Reds to hire #Pirates hitting coach Jay Bell as bench coach.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 12, 2013

He's reporting that the Reds are about to hire Jay Bell as the new bench coach. Of course, Bell is currently employed as the hitting coach for the Pirates, but he kind of has a history with Bryan Price. Both were in the Arizona Diamondbacks organization in 2007, where Bell was the bench coach and Price was the pitching coach.

Most recently, he's been the hitting coach for the Pirates for the last year, and was a coach on the New Zealand team in the 2013 WBC.

It's the first of a couple of coaching changes, and obviously spells the end of Chris Speier as well. I don't really think it's much of a surprise, with Speier being Dusty's guy to the core, but I think it's finally sinking in that changes are afoot.