I'm sort of enjoying this (not sarcasm)

[Wonderful Monds]

So much more complicated than that. Williams never knew anything about baseball, he admitted it when he was named GM. His only concern was maximizing his families profits. The good moves you mentioned were made after Krall was named GM. Williams never had anything to do with the actual baseball moves. He just knew how to dismantle a team.

Anyway, we've been through this a million times. No need to bore everyone else.

[Red Buckeye]

It’s interesting thinking about dick Williams, Kyle boddy…. There was a real plan with those guys around. Didn’t get everything right - but there was a vision, trying new concepts, taking risks. Mixed results.

Agreed with Roy’s post above. The lack of plan, vision, care, pride in the team is on full display for all to see. That’s a very good thing to elicit change.


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I have often wondered this season if maybe Dick Williams knew ownership was about to align budget with resources, or however it was spun. And didn't want to be a part of it.

Dick wasn't perfect but at least he tried to get a winning team.

[Reds]

Now is the time to go all in. Have a 1$ beer night, but you have to dress as a clown to get the deal. Have mud wrestling on the bullpen grass between innings. Bet the 50/50 raffle on a no run first inning once in awhile. I would go as far as to have Jim Day dress up as Hulk Hogan and fight a robotic Joey Votto for July 4th this year. It's time to get extreme and sell this product!

[757690]

I do find it fascinating that so many Reds fans are upset that Krall is a "Yes Man" but ignore that Dick Williams was literally the son and nephew of two of the three controlling owners of the Reds. He was well beyond a "Yes Man," he was part of the ownership family.

[gagliano]

Now is the time to go all in. Have a 1$ beer night, but you have to dress as a clown to get the deal. Have mud wrestling on the bullpen grass between innings. Bet the 50/50 raffle on a no run first inning once in awhile. I would go as far as to have Jim Day dress up as Hulk Hogan and fight a robotic Joey Votto for July 4th this year. It's time to get extreme and sell this product!

Maybe go literary, like dylan's "ezra pound and t.s. eliot fighting in the captain's tower." Re-enactment of dylan songs during 7th inning stretch. Ppl guess the song right and win concert tix or something. Hell, have a band playing on the field during the game lol

[Ren Deagle]

Name an MLB team in modern history that has had lower point than tonight. 1988 Orioles and....?

The 1899 Cleveland Spiders. The ownership bought a second team in a larger market, made "trades" of the best Cleveland players to that team, and had a home opener crowd of 100 people. Newspaper headlines announced that "The Farce Has Begun."

[MoneyInTheBank]

I'm not enjoying this at all. We can dream but this ownership group is not changing in any significant way and the controlling share belongs to an impatient, reactionary, meddling and egoist family. I fear the bruised egos from this will result in, yet another, change in plan for the direction of the franchise.

[Ren Deagle]

Real Bill Veeck stuff then? How about this: have give away nights where you have to dress in cosplay. Give away 1,000 tickets for each night. So 1,000 Elvis impersonators. 1,000 female superheroes. 1,000 goths. 1,000 clowns. 1,000 zombies.

Hire an annoying comedian to do stadium announcements. "They're selling beer for $9 a bottle folks. What a ripoff. You might want to get drunk anyway its going to be be a long night."

Make "Bad to the Bone" the team theme song played at the start of each game.

Get permission for Votto to play a whole game dressed as a mountie.

A $1 beer toga party night. Everyone wearing a toga buys beer for a dollar.

Hire a priest to perform weekly exorcisms of the ballpark. Might be real fun on Goth cosplay night.

Have a free bat give away night, only give away floppy rubber bats.

[membengal]

It’s interesting thinking about dick Williams, Kyle boddy…. There was a real plan with those guys around. Didn’t get everything right - but there was a vision, trying new concepts, taking risks. Mixed results.

Agreed with Roy’s post above. The lack of plan, vision, care, pride in the team is on full display for all to see. That’s a very good thing to elicit change.


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I can't get it out of mind.

[RedTeamGo!]

That was my old high school teammate Matt Anderson's last year in Detroit. He was terrible that year after hurting his arm and not being able to throw 100 anymore.

Ha! That is a name I have not heard in sometime. Yep, he came up and everyone was so excited because he threw so damned hard. Then he hurt his arm and came back throwing mid 90s.

[membengal]

Not just that there was a plan, a vision. It was that the vision felt like it came first and foremost from a "blue sky" approach -- what is the best way to do this? How we can build a champion? That was the starting point. That vision was then used to advocate for and secure a budget and was executed to the best of the ability of management within that constraint.

What's happening now feels exactly like what Krall said it was -- shrinking the vision down to fit the budget. The budget is the starting point. And when your organizing principal is "Your #1 priority is to spend 25% less moving forward", this is what you get. You can win on a vision developed for and constrained by a $100M budget. The Rays do it consistently. What you cannot do is win on a $150M vision kneecapped to $100M in the course of a single off-season. You don't just wind up with the down-sized $100M version of the vision. You wind up with the worst parts of the $150M vision.

also co-sign. I've been dulled in caring since Williams/Boddy left. It felt like, for all of certain posters caterwauling about what we currently see being a Rays/As approach, Williams and Boddy leaving was truly when we stopped trying a Rays/As approach. Under those guys, it felt like we were trying to find our own unique way of competing under whatever constraints ownership imposed. Now? After they left? Now I have no hope because I truly don't see any plans other than milking this thing for whatever it is worth.

[membengal]

Dick Williams never attached one of his most valuable trade chips to a crappy contract so they could dump salary.

He’s also the guy who traded for Luis Castillo. Pulled off the Dodgers trade. Identified some hidden gems like Scooter. Rebuilt and, yes, invested in the minor leagues and player development through Driveline. Signed Nick Castellanos.

So uh, no I think there’s actually a wildly massive difference in what Williams was doing compared to what Krall/ownership has been doing since.

He's had a weird anti-Williams agenda for ages. Best advice, don't engage.

[RedTeamGo!]

It’s difficult for me to see Williams as some kind of martyr with him being one of the literal owners of the team.

[membengal]

No one is saying he is a martyr. That's ridiculous framing. Stop it.

People are saying under Williams there was a discernable vision. One that appeared tailored to trying to compete under ownership limitations. There is not that now. Literally, when Williams left (for whatever reason he left) - any sort of recognizable plan left with him. Certainly no one since him has articulated a plan other than massive cutting of payroll. And no one here now has articulated how they plan to compete under whatever strictures have been placed.

With Williams' approach, I had hope because I could see the plan. The minors emphasis. The Boddy hire. Trades aimed at exploiting and finding value. Etc. Now? All I see is indiscriminate gutting and haphhazrd incompetent knee-jerk back-filling.

[Falls City Beer]

I’m not enjoying this. It’s just another in a long line of embarrassments. I want this franchise to function, like nearly every other franchise has at some point over the last 27 years. Losing is a lot of things, but worst of all, it’s boring. And that’s really not something I have much patience for.