Cincinnati Reds links - Staying committed to an old regime

The Seattle Mariners fired their GM on Friday, canning Jack Zduriencik with just over a month left in the 2015 season.  As FOX's Jon Morosi noted shortly after, the Mariners joined a host of other teams making significant changes to their front offices in recent weeks, a clear sign that there's significant waves being made in the game today.  Jack Z's firing leaves Cincinnati Reds GM Walt Jocketty as the 2nd oldest GM in the game, as the 64 year old Zduriencik is just over a month older than Walt.  The only GM older, of course, is Walt's former boss in Oakland, current New York Mets GM Sandy Alderson.

Seattle's issues become relevant to the Reds on multiple fronts now.  For one, they've been linked with hiring current Reds exec (and former MLB GM) Kevin Towers for some reason, and that's obviously something that could impact the way the current Reds structure shapes up as the rebuild reboot continues.  Secondly - and more importantly - it's yet another example that there's a changing of the guard going on in MLB front offices, with the general direction pointing towards hiring younger execs.  Except in Cincinnati, that is.

CBS's Jon Heyman pretty consistently has #HotTakes on baseball that differ substantially from my own, which means each time he posts a ranked list of anything there's a bit of question and debate.  His latest features his top 30 deals of 2015, and while I firmly agree with him on many of them (including the Josh Donaldson trade being on top), how the Reds' acquisition of Eugenio Suarez and Jonathon Crawford for one year of Alfredo Simon didn't make the cut confuses the heck out of me.  The Anthony DeSclafani pickup does crack the list, at least.

On second thought, however, perhaps the Simon trade didn't make the list because of Crawford's completely lost season.  He came to the Reds as a former 1st round pick and as the top pitching prospect in the Detroit Tigers system by many prognosticators, yet shoulder issues have completely derailed that status.  In case you missed it, he was placed back on the MiLB DL a month ago with the same shoulder issues that kept him on the shelf for the first two months of the 2015 season.  Dang.

Back in Cincinnati, The Enquirer's John Fay caught up with team owner Bob Castellini who quite obviously expressed frustration at the current state of the team.  He did mention that manager Bryan Price's job is safe for the time being, though it certainly came off more as "why fire him right now when nothing really matters" than "he'll be our manager during the 2016 season," though maybe that's just me.  Castellini emphasized that they'll take a look at things after the season's over, and he reiterated that he doesn't believe the 2016 season can already be categorized as a punt.  Maybe that's just his way of saying that he's hoping for a team-wide BABIP spike, and considering the Reds have the 4th worst rate in all of baseball over the last two seasons combined, I'm hoping for one, too.