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September 23, 2024 15 mins
Gordon Wittenmeyer of the Enquirer on the Reds firing David Bell

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Football in the NATI, brought to you in
part by modern office methods. On the official home of
the Bengals, Cincinnati's ESPN fifteen thirty.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
It's twenty one after four Pregame Sports Talk or Rouse
American Girl Pregame Sports Talk presented by Your Cincinnati in
order Kentucky Toy Dealers, Bengals and Commanders coming up tonight
in less than four hours. Meanwhile, the Reds announced last night,
right around ten o'clock David Bell out as manager. Freddie
Benavitez takes over for the rest of the season. Five

(00:31):
games left and a managerial search world commence, and I
guess it has already. Gordon Wittenmeyer covers the Reds for
The Inquirer and Cincinnati dot Com. Follow him on x
at GWMLB. I know he has been swamped since this
story broke, and so I appreciate him giving us some time. Gordon,
goodness have you? How are you?

Speaker 3 (00:52):
I'm doing okay?

Speaker 2 (00:53):
How are you?

Speaker 3 (00:54):
I'm good?

Speaker 2 (00:55):
So I don't know that anybody is shocked that David
Bell lost his job. I think that the timing of it,
how it went down for some, for many, is a
little jarring. What do you make of how things played
out in the aftermath of the final home game of
the season yesterday afternoon.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
Yeah, I would agree with your take on that the
biggest surprise was just the timing, and that was explained
today by Nick Crawl as being basically an opportunity to
get a head start on the whole process once the
decision was made. He said, the decision was made, discussions
were going on for weeks, but the decision was really

(01:36):
made in the last couple of days, and so once
that happened, he said, well, this one week of sort
of clarity and having this move done knowing you're going
to make it at the end of the season anyway,
allows for some face time with people left in the
organization for exit interviews, knowing that this change is coming,

(01:57):
and also to get a head start on making some
phone calls and putting together a list of finalists and
maybe maybe jumping ahead of the line a little bit
on some other teams that might be out there looking
to new managers.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
You you wrote about Luke Mayley, who basically has said, look,
this was not on David Bell. What went wrong this
year was a reflection of us as players, not so
much the manager. Red's going to be in Cleveland tomorrow,
so you know, you're not going to have a chance
to catch up with the guys in the clubhouse today.
But when you talk with players, what do you imagine

(02:31):
their reaction to last night's news is going to be?

Speaker 3 (02:34):
It's going to be similar. Look, the one thing about
David Bell is he's he's widely respected as a baseball
man and really honestly beloved as he's such a good person.
I don't know if you've had much of a chance
to get to know him. I've known him over the years,
a little bit as a player, a little bit as
a coach, and that now as a manager here in

(02:55):
Cincinnatian and he's just he's one of the really good
with people in the game, aside from whatever you might
think of him or the job he did this year's
manager or whatever. And so those relationships are real in
that clubhouse. And there's a lot of people with some
bittersweet emotions about this, probably probably probably more on the

(03:16):
bitter side than the sweet side. And uh, you know,
probably some more people along the lines of Luke Mailey's
thinking that that, hey, you know, if we've played a
little better maybe this guy we all like so much
would still be here, and uh, you know, obviously there's
true to that. I mean, if they're if they're winning,

(03:37):
he's he's still managing. But on the other hand, they
are really worse some issues with maybe uh maybe not
uh maybe not dropping the hammer enough on on on
some of the things that uh, maybe you and I
or some other people would have said, you know, that's unacceptable.

(03:58):
And sometimes sometimes just as simple as not saying that
something's unacceptable, that we all can use our own eyes
and see, you know, whether it's you know, Ellie de
la Cruz clowning around on a pop up and it
winds up dropping between two guys that can't happen. Be

(04:18):
nice if somebody said that can't happen, But that wasn't
the response. And so that and breakdowns and fielding breakdowns
and base running fundamentals at times not looking prepared. Those
are all things that eventually, no matter what the root

(04:39):
cause is or which people are failing, that always is
going to fall on leadership and the manager.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
Do you believe there was an accountability problem with this
year's team.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
Yes, I can't speak to everything that went on behind
closed doors. I can speak to the way questions I
and other people asked public were answered publicly. I can
speak to what I saw game after game after game,
and how players seem to respond to mistakes, and how

(05:15):
I guess how leadership seem to respond to to some
of those mistakes. So there's different styles in different ways
to get people to respond. But when you're talking about
a very young team, a group of very young players,
most of these guys are not most of them, but
a lot of these guys we're spending their first years

(05:37):
in the big leagues this year. If you take the
pitching side out of it, you just look at the
every day players. It's a very young group. And when
you have that and not a lot of sort of
peer police in the room to check and balance things,
then that is always necessarily going to fall on the
manager and the coaches to do that. It does anyway,

(05:59):
but it's been to be. It can't be. It can't
be delegated at that but there's nobody to pick it
up except for the manager and the coaches at that point,
so that if those problems persist, that's who it's on.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Cortin Wittmeyer covers the reds for the Inquirer and Cincinnati
dot Com and is on x at GWMLB. Nick Carawl
today talked about philosophical differences, and you know, fourteen months
ago they were on the same page enough that David
Bell gets a three year contract extension. What philosophical differences

(06:32):
emerge over the last fourteen months.

Speaker 3 (06:35):
Well, I took that to me, and part of it
was he felt he spelled out the part last year.
Like last year and up through last year, he felt
like that was the right man at the right time
for that job. And the guys who came up from
Matt Matt mcclains of the world, Eli Dela Cruz, Andrew Abbott,

(06:55):
Christian and Karnashian Stent even though Lbi Morte all had
success in those debuts last season, and that team performed well,
played its ass off all the way down a stretch,
overachieved for the amount of pitching they got, and they
were in it until a day before the season ended,
and this year almost polar opposite took place. Now, there

(07:19):
were injuries, no question, But if you want to talk
about injuries, we can name a whole bunch of kids
and start rattling off key injuries. But the guys on
the field and guys that were expected in many cases
to perform this year, didn't. You weren't going to get
like all these rookies. You're lucky if you throw six

(07:40):
rookies at the wall. You're lucky if one sticks to
stick and really perform at a high level and continue
to after the even debuts we saw last year. So
you knew you weren't going to get it from everybody.
But the things when you set up a roster to
be more athletic, to run a lot, to try to

(08:01):
beat teams at the margins, you can't lose at the margins.
You can't lose consistently at the margins, or it's a
failure of process. And that's what we saw happen over
and over again this year.

Speaker 2 (08:18):
I think a lot of us thought it was interesting.
I certainly did. The press release last night included one quote.
It was from Nick Krawl. The media availability today was
one person. It was Nick Krawl. Is the message there?
And Nick said, this was my decision set a multiple times.
Is the message there? Look, this is on, Nick, this
is next show. Stop talking about ownership or do you

(08:42):
believe that there was a little bit more ownership involvement
than maybe everybody's letting on.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
Oh, there's no doubt that there was ownership involvement, and
by definition more than zero, you know, and zero is
the amount of voice we heard from ownership up on this. Yes,
there were constant conversations with ownership on that I wouldn't

(09:09):
I wouldn't try to suggest based on some of the
things that I've heard that Vod Castellini said, Hey, you
got to fire David Bell because the team sucks. I
do think that this was Nick Nick Caral's decision. I
do think that he watched a lot of these breakdowns
and probably at first did a lot of head scratching
and then was like it got increasingly upset about what

(09:32):
he was watching is and of course in the season
went on and realized that we need a change going forward.
We have to have somebody come in with a different voice.
And uh, you know, is that that voice? Uh David
David Bell, as I said, is so terrific human being

(09:53):
and these relationships he builds in the game, or the
strength his strength, and it was probably kind of a power,
a manager power he had last year when these young
guys came in. But after they experienced the success they
did in some cases that sense of hey, you guys

(10:15):
are all big leaders in my mind, or everybody belongs
and we're all in this together. And even you know,
eventually you know you're telling sixty guys you're all a
member of my twenty six man roster. As far as
accensier as well, well, that's not true. I mean, you know,
these guys aren't idiots. They they know there's accountability built

(10:38):
in to professional sports. In Major League Baseball, that's what
they call it the major leagues for the reason you
don't have to shine them. So I think when you're
talking about, in particular, young players without a heck of
a lot of veterans in the clubhouse to really, as
I said before, peer police and very few. And they

(11:01):
do a good job the few they have, but it's
not a very good student to teacher ratio in there.
So when you don't have that, you probably need a
little stronger messaging, a little farmer hand than we saw
at times this year. I think that that ultimately is
what led to what we saw last night.

Speaker 2 (11:20):
You've been very generous with your time, and I know
you have a lot going on, so one more so,
Nick was not the executive who hired David Bell. That
was Dick Williams. So this is going to be the
first managerial search that he spearheads. He just fired a
guy with two years left on his deal. So ownership
is going to have to pay David Bell for two
more seasons to not work for them. Does that dynamic

(11:42):
put an added dimension of heat on Nick.

Speaker 3 (11:47):
Well in some ways? I mean then look, ownership sind
off on this. This doesn't get done without it going
all the way up the ladder. So now, what right
they got to pay the rest of the contract. Are
you willing to go in on Tito Francona if he
wants to come out of retirement he says his health

(12:08):
is good enough that he'll give it one more go round.
Are you going to pay what would be the starting
price on him three at twelve million? Would you do that?
If if you're the owner of this ball club? I
mean history tells us maybe not, and recent history tells
us that, And if he's already paying another manager to
not manage in the next two years, maybe not. But

(12:31):
if you want the best guy on the planet who's
under the age of sixty nine right now, who can
manage a baseball team, it might be Teo Frankcona. And
if you're willing to spend that money, that's my first
phone call. Then you go to guys like Skip Schumacher
in Miami. He's leaving Miami. He's going to be a
hot commodity. His price might not be cheap because there

(12:52):
might be a few teams after him. How aggressive do
you want to get with that? So these are the
kind of things I think. David Ross, a former Red
who got the shaft in Chicago, did a good job
there and the only thing that hiring Craig Council has
proven is that the manager didn't make a difference in Chicago.
So so maybe David Ross is somebody to look at,

(13:16):
because maybe he wasn't what the Cubs tried to tell
us he was. So these these are all things in
my mind. You put your wish together, the wishless together.
Tito Francono's at the top of it, and then you
you just go after the best guys. But the resources,
what ownerships wanting to spend that might wind up like

(13:39):
who they land on as the guys they interview might
tell us a lot about that.

Speaker 2 (13:43):
Yeah, uh, you know, and one more. I lied, I'm
gonna ask you one more. Ever, ever since Brian Price
took over for Dusty Baker, I've listened to people opine
that the job is one day going to be Barry Larkins.
You didn't mention his name. Does that mean he is
not a candidate to be the Reds next manager.

Speaker 3 (14:05):
Oh? I think he'll get a conversation at an interview
with with Krawl. I think he'll be looked at. All
indications that that I know of, it's something he would
be interested in. He's a he's an interesting candidate when
you look at it now. I remember when Ryan Sandberg

(14:27):
was wanted to be the manager in Chicago and they said, well, okay,
go be the manager of the minor league. So well,
and then he stuck to the stuck to the stuck too,
and they didn't want to hire him as the manager
because you can't fire him. You know, you hire the
Hall of Famer and you know there's a notion. So uh,
he wound up getting shot in in Philly. And but

(14:51):
Lark lark And I'm sure will be looked at and
I'm sure he'll get an interview. It'll be interesting. I
mean there's this. I could totally see the Domino's falling
in a way that keep it at least right in
the mix to the end. It's not the guy.

Speaker 2 (15:09):
I know you have a lot going on. Busy day
for you. I appreciate you giving us some time. Thank
you so much, Gordon, you got it. Read Gordon's work
since I dot Com The Inquirer gets quotes from Luke Mailey.
I'm sure there'll be more of those as the Reds
get back on the field tomorrow. We are way late
twenty three. From five o'clock, it's Ralph's American Grill pregame
sports talk presented by your Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky Twyter

(15:32):
Dealers on ESPN fifteen thirty Cincinnati Sports Station.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
You've been listening to Football in Theinetti on the official
home of the Bengals, Cincinnatis, ESPN fifteen thirty

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