From John Fay:
GM Walt Jocketty said the club is already at budget as far payroll, meaning they’ll go to spring training with the roster as is, without another big bat. CEO Bob Castellini said for the first time that the economy is affecting the budget.
“Yeah, it is, you bet,” Castellini said. “We’ve got get the top line (revenue up). We’re focused on it. We’ve got just about the whole team we anticipated we were able to put together.”
Last year’s player payroll was $74 million to start the year. The Reds may not reach that. Jocketty thinks they will.
snip…
The Reds aren’t saying they’re writing off the 2009 season but the focus is on the future.
“I don’t think you can put a timetable on it,” Jocketty said. “It takes time to build a competitive organization — a consistently competitive organization. You can do some things for instant success. But you can’t sustain. We want to build the organization to sustain success and be a club that’s in the hunt every year. We really trying to develop our younger players and utilize the talent we have in the organization.
“I think in our division right now, it could be any interesting year. We’ll see what happens.”
Again, the Reds will go to spring training with what they have.
“We’ve got a lot of new guys,” Jocketty said. “We’ve got a lot of things to look at. I’d like to get into camp and see where are before we start tinkering.”
Sounds like the Reds basically are saying what many of us have been saying…”wait until next year”.