How is the Reds blogosphere reacting to the new ownership?
JD has some thoughts.
Red Hot Mama has a great post with her reactions.
Shawn discusses it here.
Marc Lancaster describes the scene.
For my part, I was very pleased with Friday’s press conference (and with an interview with Bob Castellini on 1360 later). Castellini said all the right things, and I’m very hopeful that his removal of John Allen from the baseball side of the operation is an indication that Castellini “gets it.”
My goodness. If this team is in contention for the playoffs in July, and Castellini puts up the money for pitching, it could get quite interesting.
Of course, it would already be interesting, because all of the “ifs” involved in that scenario would have to work out just right. (If Paul Wilson puts up average numbers… if Eric Milton does not repeat last year’s performance… if there really is something to the home/road splits of Dave Williams… if Wagner and Coffey pitch well… and to a lesser extent: if Kearns and Pena live up to their potential…)
With that said, I wonder how close we would have to be before the new owner would agree to increase the payroll during the season? We’d better not trade good players for a two or three month rental.
Another thing I found interesting was his comments on the farm system. His comments about being impatient in regard to slow player development gave me the impression that the Reds will probably draft more college players, particularly college pitchers, with their high picks in June.
He’s probably impatient in that regard as well, but in the context of his speech he was talking about the farm system and player development.
Castellini is definitely saying all the right things, and I have no problem with him saying that he’s going to keep payroll around the same this year, because there’s really nothing to spend it on right now.
He also sounds to be the type where if a great trade comes up that increases payroll, he’ll consider it seriously rather than just kill it.