Phil Castellini surprised that Opening Day tickets still unsold

[RedTeamGo!]

I’m gonna go a bit against the grain here and agree with the sentiment a bit, unless I’m just totally missing what you’re getting at here.

It’s kind of mind boggling to me that Castellini is being such a major cheapskate to this degree, because we just came up on the 10 year anniversary of Joey Votto’s mega extension. If I remember correctly, at the time that was the biggest contract ever given out in pro sports. I was genuinely super excited about what the organization was doing and I felt like they had a bright future ahead of them. To their credit, they also gave out sizable contracts to Phillips and Bailey. And hell, even a couple years ago I was warming up to them again after they went on a spending spree and gave out their biggest FA contract ever.

Which makes what they’re pulling right now even stranger and just makes it a bigger kick in the junk. I really don’t understand what could’ve possibly happened, its pretty obvious they didn’t get screwed by the pandemic THAT bad if at all, to where they needed to just blow it up completely they way they did this off-season. I don’t know if Bob is going all weekend at Bernie’s and Phil is calling the shots now and tightening up the purse strings, or if Bob himself is just the wishy washiest dude ever. But in the last 10 years the dudes ownership legacy has been a rollercoaster of being the best owner the Reds have ever had in my life (admittedly very low bar) to being cringe inducingly cheap and embarrassing.

The only thing that makes sense is that Phil is in charge now and he’s just using it as an ATM

[Mitri]

I think the wishy-washy comment from WM is valid. It's clear the Castellini's are thinned-skinned about this stuff, as yesterday showed. They're making decisions based on whims and feelings, which should worry all of us. I'd feel better about a quick teardown if there was a concrete plan to be executed. There's not.

But the obvious problem is that the Castellini's are involved in baseball decisions in the first place. A good franchise owner doles out the money and backs away. Hire a PR firm and let them spin messages. Hire the best executives (hint: Krall is not one of them) and leave them alone. Set a budget for the year and allow the executives to max it out. The Castellinis think that the skills they possess (inherited?) to run a successful corporation transfer to running a baseball team, but it doesn't always work that way. Hopefully, yesterday was a wake-up call. I agree that the fans need to keep the pressure on them until they keep their hands off the team, or sell.

[dubc47834]

That’s not fair. The Reds from 2010-2013 were one of the best teams in baseball during that time. This ownership did what was necessary to win and were smart about it. That team was easily my favorite teams to watch. I was proud to be a Reds fan during those years.

And the last two years the Reds have been competitive and fun to watch. No team during the Linder years was fun to watch or every any good. This ownership has been miles better than the Linder ownership.

Those early years were because they hit on the farm system, not because of any great free agency signings. The best move they pulled by bringing in someone was signing Scott Rolen. Other than that, I believe most of that team was home grown talent.

edit...I guess Brandon Phillips as well. But when that trade was made, I don't think anyone thought he was going to be what he turned in to.

[Old school 1983]

In the past 2 pages we’ve seen comments about the team building the best stretch of baseball in recent Reds history between 2010 and 2013 via growing a young core. We’ve seen posts about the Reds going on a FA spending spree in 2019-2020 and it not working. Phil’s comments were salty and ridiculous for the most part. But people are ignoring what he said about building a pipeline of young talent into Cincinnati through the minors and it being the way to win. I think the Reds would have run away with the division in 2020 without the shortened season. But by 2021, they had to start selling it off. The only sustainable winning stretch in recent Reds history was accomplished by a pipeline of homegrown talent. People are more than willing to acknowledge that when they are trying to mitigate current ownerships role there. But when they say we want to get to building such a pipeline, people go off. The way he delivered the message was obscenely terrible, but that was the message. I get the sell off hurt a lot of feelings, but they dismantled a barely 500 team where the star RF was not coming back pretty much no matter what, you probably got Votto’s last great season, your best pitcher per WAR was likely never going to come close to that performance again, and the roster had considerable fat on it like Suarez, Shogo, and Barnhart to a lesser degree. All of this while multiple young great players were emerging in the minors and MLB. As much incompetence as we’ve seen in executing rebuild plans since 2015, they may have finally seen the light. However, any goodwill from the fanbase to stomach the hard decision type moves we saw this off-season is gone and Phil doesn’t understand why it is.

[Reds Freak]

Those early years were because they hit on the farm system, not because of any great free agency signings. The best move they pulled by bringing in someone was signing Scott Rolen. Other than that, I believe most of that team was home grown talent.

edit...I guess Brandon Phillips as well. But when that trade was made, I don't think anyone thought he was going to be what he turned in to.

They definitely drafted and traded very well starting with the mid 2000s. But the Castellini's also doled out some big contracts to keep that home grown talent like Votto, Bruce, Phillips, Cueto, Homer, Cozart, Arroyo, Chapman, etc. It seems like something changed in 2015. They made some bad and/or unlucky deals, gave it another try in 2020, then have since given up again.

[WildcatFan]

We’re closing in on the same amount of time wandering through the desert as was told in Exodus.

None of the Castellinis give off much of a Moses vibe.

Maybe they should part with the Reds, see?

[Old school 1983]

They definitely drafted and traded very well starting with the mid 2000s. But the Castellini's also doled out some big contracts to keep that home grown talent like Votto, Bruce, Phillips, Cueto, Homer, Cozart, Arroyo, Chapman, etc. It seems like something changed in 2015. They made some bad and/or unlucky deals, gave it another try in 2020, then have since given up again.

By 2015, the really great prospect pool had dried up and the Reds were unwillingly to part with some of the pieces of the previous soon enough to replenish it in any meaningful way. So we got some good trades Latos, Simon and a bevy of crap or ones that didn’t work out even if they sounded good at the time. The cupboard as bear and they later too late to restock. In hindsight it’s easy, but the team had peaked in 12 and was moving downward in 13. The sell off should have happened prior to the 14 season.

[HammerTime]

If your best stretch you can point to in 20 years is 3 years where you won ZERO playoff series then there is a problem. You don’t get bonus points for trying sometimes.

If you run into a “butthead” in the morning, you ran into a “butthead”. If you run into buttheads all day, you're the “butthead”.

The Banana brigade is the problem, not the solution.

[missionhockey21]

This is the energy I imagine ol' Phil was going for yesterday.

[Unassisted]

I can't blame Phil for being salty about the increasingly loud shouting to sell the team. How much an owner spends on their business is never the customers' call.

But most owners respect the emotional bond that fans have with the team and don't lay things out in those stark terms. Phil let his guard down and showed that his emotional attachment is to the budget. I'm going to guess that he heard from some Hamilton County commissioners, who went out on a limb to issue the taxes that funded the construction of GABP. They probably reminded him that those fans who don't control his budget are paying for the building that his business operates in. That's the context that I frame the apology in.

I do think moving the team is an option and if the Castellinis intend to remain the majority owner for the foreseeable future, it will be their initiative that makes it move. There are too many larger media markets with major league teams in other sports that don't have MLB. If fans actually follow through with hastily-formed plans to abandon ship on the Reds, my guess is the team starts griping about the shortcomings of GABP, as a precursor to finding a new home for the team.

[REDREAD]

My heart is telling me to stick with it, to never entertain the idea of quitting or accepting that The Reds could move, but my brain is telling me I’m an idiot for not having jumped ship years ago.

I feel the same way. I trusted Bob C (based on what he did in the Walt years).
While I was mad about the tanking, I had a sliver of hope he'd do the right thing and eventually try to win again.
This past offseason, along with Phil C's comments -- I just don't have the hope anymore.
MLB has devolved to the point where you can either root for a perpetual loser , or one of the 10-15 or so franchises that at least sometimes tries to win.
The entire sport is broken. Today, I don't want to waste any more time or money on it. That might change later in the season, but when you
have the owner's son telling you that they have no intention of ever investing in a winner again and we should just support them because "it's in Cincy", hard
to even care anymore. Why bother following a team that is pretty much doomed to be under 500 most of the time? A team that is too cheap to keep players
like Winker. A team that gives away Miley for nothing. A team that somehow can't find a way to keep Sony Gray, but is willing to get an inferior guy like Minor for about the same cost. A team that is ok with having a GM (Krall) who clearly is in over his head and is easily taken advantage of by other GMs. Ok, I don't want to be repetitive, but I see where you are coming from.

[Bob Sheed]

I can't blame Phil for being salty about the increasingly loud shouting to sell the team. How much an owner spends on their business is never the customers' call.

Look... If the Castellini's want to buy K-Mart and use it as a tax write-off or whatever... fine. No one is rooting for K-Mart. But this is baseball. There's only one hometown professional baseball team to root for. It's a legal monopoly.

To hold an entity that involves fan experience hostage, just so all the owners can pocket the profits made... well, like I said before, there's a special place in hell for people like that. I'd say they need to go buy some business that doesn't have a fanbase. But of course that wouldn't be a monopoly so you know...

As it stands now, they are cashing in by worsening the fan experience. Shame on them.

[REDREAD]

Those early years were because they hit on the farm system, not because of any great free agency signings. The best move they pulled by bringing in someone was signing Scott Rolen. Other than that, I believe most of that team was home grown talent.

edit...I guess Brandon Phillips as well. But when that trade was made, I don't think anyone thought he was going to be what he turned in to.

There was good trades too.. in addition to what you mentioned, if BP counts, than so does Arroyo
Latos was a key move. Also Broxton and Ludwick. The two high ticket relievers that got hurt.. one was Marshall, the other name escapes me.. had those
2 guys been healthy, they would have made an impact.

IMO, there was a lot of homegrown talent on the roster, but a good GM was required to fill in the gaps. For example, if Krall inherited the same team that Walt did, I doubt the Reds make the playoffs.

[REDREAD]

In the past 2 pages we’ve seen comments about the team building the best stretch of baseball in recent Reds history between 2010 and 2013 via growing a young core. We’ve seen posts about the Reds going on a FA spending spree in 2019-2020 and it not working. Phil’s comments were salty and ridiculous for the most part. But people are ignoring what he said about building a pipeline of young talent into Cincinnati through the minors and it being the way to win. I think the Reds would have run away with the division in 2020 without the shortened season. But by 2021, they had to start selling it off. The only sustainable winning stretch in recent Reds history was accomplished by a pipeline of homegrown talent. People are more than willing to acknowledge that when they are trying to mitigate current ownerships role there. But when they say we want to get to building such a pipeline, people go off. The way he delivered the message was obscenely terrible, but that was the message. I get the sell off hurt a lot of feelings, but they dismantled a barely 500 team where the star RF was not coming back pretty much no matter what, you probably got Votto’s last great season, your best pitcher per WAR was likely never going to come close to that performance again, and the roster had considerable fat on it like Suarez, Shogo, and Barnhart to a lesser degree. All of this while multiple young great players were emerging in the minors and MLB. As much incompetence as we’ve seen in executing rebuild plans since 2015, they may have finally seen the light. However, any goodwill from the fanbase to stomach the hard decision type moves we saw this off-season is gone and Phil doesn’t understand why it is.

The Reds have been trying to build a pipeline of young talent ever since Leake was traded.
There's been some success, but recently the Reds have shown cost cutting takes precedence over keeping that talent.
Every guy that left the team was a salary dump, not a good baseball team.
Then how do they "fix" the team after the fans get mad? They sign a bunch of mediocre at best stopgaps.
There is no plan.
If last offseason becomes the model, it will be impossible for the farm to produce enough talent to even replace what is leaving.

[missionhockey21]

The biggest thing Bob could do to show that what happened was unacceptable is to get his son out of that position. Transition him to something to save face, I mean I wish he wouldn't, but we know at bare minimum that would happen. It is a joke to have someone as COO who said what he said.

Show to the fans that what he said was so out of line from what the ownership feels, and that it is so unacceptable, that he can't be in a position to represent the Reds like he has.

I am NO fan of Thom, and obviously this is apples vs oranges (something hateful vs just dumb), but Thom said his on a hot mic. Phil intended to say what he did and for it to be heard, and it took several attempts to get close to an apology, but it was an apology like you would say when you were eight to your sibling, when your mom made you.

We all know this won't happen, but it would restore a sliver of faith in ownership if they showed how unacceptable that was. Of course I am instead expecting for Phil to get promoted to Bob's role of master overseer in the next couple of years instead.