The Cincinnati Reds had some big news break right before the start of their final series of the regular season. ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel reported the news that Nick Krall has been promoted from General Manager to President of Baseball Operations. Taking over for Krall at the General Manager position will be Brad Meador.
This set of moves is simply another set of internal promotions from the Reds organization. Krall, who was already the top decision maker in the organization among non-ownership, remains so. He just gets a new, fancier title (and perhaps a few new and different responsibilities), moving up from Vice President, General Manager to President of Baseball Operations – a title that didn’t exist for a few years after Dick Williams left the organization.
Nick Krall is in his 21st season with the Reds. He joined the organization in 2003 in the scouting department and he’s worked his way up the chain ever since. In 2018 he was named as the team’s General Manager when Dick Williams was promoted to the President of Baseball Operations. He remained in that role even after William’s departed the sport, but now he’s moving up to that role. C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic is also reporting that this promotion for Krall comes along with a contract extension (no length or salary was disclosed).
Brad Meador has been with the organization for 14 seasons. He joined Cincinnati in 2009 as an area scouting supervisor after being the associate head coach and recruiting coordinator at the University of Cincinnati for a decade. Meador worked his way up from being the scouting supervisor to the amateur scouting director (the guy who runs the draft for the club – and Meador handled the 2019, 2020, and 2021 drafts for the Reds), before being promoted to the Vice President/Assistant General Manager three years ago. He’d remained in that role until today when he was promoted to Vice President/General Manager.
Maybe these promotions are just related to salary increase after a good season… They deserve it, actually I think…
And maybe trying to keep another team from stealing Krall away from the Reds?
The team has certainly made strides the past three years with GM, drafting and scouting be a big reason. If players deserve raises so do these guys.
Not sure what this means. Overall Krall has done a solid job even though his grade at the trade deadline was a D. I hope this means he will be given more of a budget next year. Even if we have the same payroll that’s some $50M that we will have to work with after Votto and Moutsuckus’s contracts are off the books. Priority #1 has to be a top of the order starter. I would love to see them go after Sonny Gray although he won’t be cheap. I’m thinking 2 year $45 million. Gray has hinted at retirement after this year and we know Cincy is the closest team to his family which I believe is in Nashville. Plus there is the DJ connection. Would make sense for both parties. Maybe he would even give us a discount?
+1000 for Sonny Gray
Given Sonny’s make up, this is the one free agent signing I could get behind. Especially if it is for three years or less. I really do not expect the Reds to do a lot in the free agency market, but who really knows. An important trade seems much more likely in my mind.
Brewers are looking at money issues and may have to dump a few players. Pittsburgh is well. . .Pittsburgh. Cubs will probably spend money and Cards will rebound, but need a ton of pitching help.
Get 1decent veteran starter to add to Greene, Lodolo, Ashcraft, Phillips, Abbott, etc. Pick up a couple of bullpen pieces(could be simply move Lively to long man and hopefully Antone can get healthy) and and RH OF power bat and go win the Central. . .
A D seems harsh for the trade deadline. What trade did you want him to make? Almost every rental SPs were abysmal on their new teams. The single trade he made looks like a good one. Standing pat was probably the right move, or at least a neutral one. C/C+ at the deadline seems more reasonable. Our injury luck down the stretch was worse than anyone could have reasonably expected
The Reds needed arms, period. They didn’t have the arms needed to pitch the requisite innings of a 162 game season. The patchwork scrambling they have done since the deadline wore down an already overused bullpen even more which has been a major factor in them being in the difficult situation they are in versus already being into the playoffs.
Any of those arms that have been “horrible” down the stretch still would have been significantly better than Spiers who had a 9.00 ERA prior to last night in 3 starts. We also went 0-3 in his games. We win one of those games and our playoff chances are something closer to 50%
Lance Lynn has not been horrible 4.50 ER. Lorenzen 5.63 ERA and a no-hitter…pretty sure we would have won that game. And Giolioto with a 6+ ERA has still been better than Spiers in his 3 starts. Angels gave away next to nothing to get Lorenzon
Also Moll was a solid trade at the time but it’s starting to look worse the better Boyle pitches. He has 2 starts at the MLB level now with a 0.00 ERA and has looked better in each start. He’s going again tonight so we will see….
This is where trust comes into play. In my case, I trust Nick Krall to make a wise decision as far as the value of trades and whether they were worth making. It would be nice to know what the potential trades look like so we could actually debate them but since we don’t know we have to leave it to trust. Or not.
@pete>> My biggest and nearly only reservation about Krall is that if he couldn’t decide who to trade to get an arm or 2 in at the deadline, how can he be counted on to effectively decide which coming prospects to repurpose and which to trade to fill organizational black holes.
For now, I believe that given Krall’s loud public talk ahead of the deadline silence means he was boxed in financially by the powers above him when he wasn’t expecting that to happen. I hope his being named PoBO means he will get a budget number and then be left alone to run the baseball operation without interference from above or via underlings making end runs around him to his bosses.
Moll has been an amazing pickup. Almost every outing he has put nothing but zeros on the board.
Jim, you certainly have my respect I think you know that. This being said it basically sounds like he should’ve made a trade it at any cost. Where would you draw the line? We don’t even know where the line is. I absolutely think he was trying his hardest to make a deal but the ones that were out there he deemed to be unworthy. We just don’t know the particulars so we were at a disadvantage. Again, I think it just comes down to trust or not.
Even the trade for Sam Moll might just backfire given Joe Boyle’s potential. I think most of us would consider that fairly low hanging fruit and look at the price that the Reds may ultimately pay. I’ve said it before, and I will say it again, I wouldn’t trade Nick Krall for any other teams president of baseball operations. I just wouldn’t. In my opinion, we are only on the precipice of how good this organization is going to be in the coming years.