The Cincinnati Reds will be looking for a new pitching coach “immediately”, according to president of baseball operations Nick Krall. He put out a statement this morning to the media noting that pitching coach Derek Johnson, who took a personal leave of absence in June, will not be returning to the club.
The news isn’t entirely a surprise. Once Johnson left the team remained quiet about his status. We heard nothing from them or from Johnson about whether he would return during the season or not. The longer there was no word the more it seemed to feel like he was not going to be coming back.
During the absence, assistant pitching coach Matt Tracy took over as the pitching coach. He had been with the Reds since the 2023 season where he was the bullpen coach. Tracy was in his first season as an assistant pitching coach in 2026.
When the Reds brought in Derek Johnson following the 2018 season it was seen as a big time get as Johnson was considered one of the best pitching coaches in baseball. Stealing him away from a division rival was a big move. Following the 2021 season, Johnson took on even more responsibilities within the organization as he also took on the role as the Director of Pitching and oversaw the direction of pitching development in the minor leagues. How that role will be handled moving forward without Johnson wasn’t immediately available.
The timing of the announcement and the timing of looking for a new pitching coach isn’t too surprising in itself. The Reds weren’t going to be able to talk to many candidates during the season as most of them were probably going to be coming from the MLB or perhaps MiLB ranks. Some college coaches/pitching coaches may also be in consideration and perhaps available to interview while the season was still going on, but to do a full search while seeking out the best possible candidates following the end of the season is likely when you need to search.
No Redsfest for 2026
Yesterday it was announced that the Cincinnati Reds would not be holding Redsfest in 2026. While they didn’t specify why, the answer is pretty simple: The owners plan to lock the players out in early December when the current Collective Bargaining Agreement expires and they don’t have any expectation of a quick agreement. Without that, they can’t talk to the players and ask them to participate in events, such as Redsfest.
It takes a lot of time to plan out an event like this. It takes plenty of money, too. The team flies current and former players in, hires staff (though there are also plenty of volunteers), puts down money for the space, etc. Without current players, which are far and away the biggest draw of the event, people won’t show up in large numbers. Without the people, vendors aren’t going to pay thousands of dollars each to show up. Redsfest is a fundraising event for the Reds Community Fund. Without tons of people it would likely cost them money rather than raise money.
There will be no discussion of the social media rumor as to why Johnson was not with the team. This is not your group chat for gossip.
A strong post-season +500,000 for saying that, Doug. Take the garbage elsewhere.
Doug, I appreciate the stands you take on matters like this!! Thanks!
Thank you, Doug! I appreciate you keeping this place cleaned up. It is so refreshing.
Yeah just saw something on Reddit. People are sick.
Thank you Doug for your message. Truly no one’s business. Wish him the best and hope all is okay with Derek and his family.
I have no idea what you are referring to, because I don’t follow any Reds-related social media.
And your comment is a timely reminder on why I don’t.
@doug. I do agree with your comment but, the reds should have given a bit more information. By doing that that would stop the gossip.just my humble opinion
Much appreciated Doug . That’s taking the high road.
Thanks, Doug. You’re a good man.
Very much expected. Wishing him well in whatever comes next. His reasons are his reasons and that’s that.
Good luck to him. On the Reds’ side, it might not be the worst thing to shake things up a bit.
Shake things up a lot! This franchise (the Reds) is in kind of a death spiral.
And the idea that the “Owners” are going to lock out the players and this is going to make them knuckle under to an Owner-mandated contract agreement is ludicrous.
These people are so greedy as short-sighted and will ruin the game before giving an inch. What will your franchises be worth if the game and attendance collapse?
I know! Let’s ruin our investments just to show them who is the tough guy!
Why is it always the owners who are blamed as the greedy ones?
What will a player’s salary be if there is no baseball. Hard to find $780,000 minimum salaries for 20-somethings in any other industries. Also hard to find mega million dollar guaranteed salaries whether you perform or not while being paid such salaries. Perhaps they would like to apply for the projected $54/hr jobs in the new steel plant being built in the Midwest, Iowa I believe.
Personally,even if it takes years I would like to see a total reset of baseball, in fact, in every professional sport, to align it better with reality in the world.
I don’t know about you Doc but no one I know has ever bought a ticket to watch the owner do anything. They have never bought a jersey with the owners name on it. They never paid to upgrade their cable package so they could watch the owner on their tv. They never paid $9 for a beer because that’s what the beer costs when you want to watch the owner do owner things.
We never collected owner cards growing up. We didn’t buy Sports Illustrated or Baseball Weekly because Arte Moreno was on the cover we bought it because Ken Griffey Jr. was on the cover.
There aren’t many industries where the workers are an infinitely small group who create an $12,000,000,000 a year amount of revenue. Comparing that to a steel plant worker is dumb and you know it.
Realistically, Johnson not returning isn’t a surprise. Nor is the reason for his absence material. That’s Johnson’s business. The question is simply what does Krall do now? Who he hires, etc. is what matters here and in the future. As for Reds Fest, that’s three cancellations in four years. The owners of the Reds and baseball generally couldn’t make it clearer how little the fans matter in their calculation. Fans are just fungible sources of money. Castellini and company aren’t able to link the poor product to the declining attendance. After all, “where you going to go”?
The previous events were cancelled because the convention center was under renovation. The Reds use all 200,000 square feet of the event space. I don’t think there’s another option in town that could possibly host the event. The next two biggest ones I can find information on are the Sharonville Convention Center and the Northern Kentucky Convention Center and they have 65,000 and 46,000 square feet. And those two aren’t even “continuous” real estate, but separated some within the space.
I vote Loveland Castle!
Omg Peter for the win!!! Screw the wine tasting, I want to talk to Corky Miller at the Loveland Castle!!!
My best advice would to be a real national search, not a targets recruitment, ie of Francona or of Johnson himself.
This is a very real opportunity to advance the Reds pitching, both performance and development. In theory, that would guide the acquisition of pitching, too. It is an opportunity for paradigm shift.
That isn’t to say Johnson didn’t advance the Reds pitching, as he had success. It is to say, however, that it’s no longer 2018, when he was hired. And Johnson’s influence is at the core of the system all the way down to the Dominican rookie league. Shaking the heck out of the tree for many if not all of the dead leaves to fall might not be a bad thing.
Further, where a targeted search informs you of one set of perspectives, a national search informs you of several perspectives. This is true even if you end up hiring ‘the favorite,’ as you still learn through the process. And, you may gain other resources in the process.
+1000
Yup, that’s the way to do it.
Yup, that is the way to do it. – BK (experienced commenter; kids, don’t do this by yourself at home. 🙂 )
But that’s not the way the Reds will do it.
The Reds seemed to have some good and some not so good pitching results (measured by ERA+ numbers for the whole staff) during his Reds tenure. Hope for the best for Mr. Johnson going forward.
Maybe the Orthopedic Doctors Association will give him an award as the top TJ producer for the last decade.
Do the Reds really have more than other teams? Is there a list or chart we can see that shows this?
His pitchers at least write books about it.
I will see my St X ’69 classmate at our annual golf outing. He is former Reds and Bengals team doctor, now retired (we are 75 YO!). I’ll ask him which MD has done the most TJ surgeries (if he knows).
@oldtimer. I graduated from Bishop Fenwick in Middletown we had Senior year retreat and St.Xavier was also there. Do you remember if you attended I know it was mandatory.I have a photo with you guys and us guys
The only retreat I remember in 1968-69 was at the Jesuit property in Milford. If that’s what you meant, yes, I was there.
The Bishop Fenwick (the actual guy) was the founder of St X (known as Xavier University HS then) in 1831.
Well , they could go for Chris Hook now…Couldn’t they?
If I’m not mistaken Johnson and Benivedes are the only coaches Tito was forced to keep. Wish he could have brought Carl Willis with him from Cleveland when he came. I think we have seen a reduced role for Freddie as well as Mike Napoli’s role has increased as Bench Coaches.
Carl Willis is a former Reds pitcher from 1980s.
Amen, now get rid of the remaining pitching coaches. Also, don’t forget to get new hitting coaches that can help our hitters be hitters!
There’s only one. Jim Tracy.
1. Don’t you just “love” how well the Reds consolidate responsibilities into singular positions. I believe most people call that “nickel and dimin'”.
2. Is it just my imagination or did the wheels fall off this pitching staff when DJ stepped away this season?
If Anyone wasn’t still effective this would be his chance to make the transition to coaching.
Antone, I think you meant.
A couple of college coaches they may consider are Nate Yeskie (LSU) and Matt Hobbs (Arkansas), one from the majors is Ruben Niebla (San Diego Padres).
I thought he did a good job when he was here . Maybe it is the games I go to but usually the reds over past many years at gabp are involved in a low scoring pitchers duel. He is a big part of that
You wonder if the pitchers poorer performance this year had to do with his personal problems.
What are the odds on Matt Tracy being named the new pitching coach?
They can’t be good odds. He was an MLB bullpen coach prior to 2026 and in his only season beyond that the pitching staff he was an assistant pitching coach to and then interim pitching coach of was very bad and nearly every starter took a big step back. The Reds have to aim higher and bigger. A pitching coach doesn’t cost that much money by comparison to a player. Find the right guy and write the check.
Actually, that sounds like the perfect resume for this ownership group. Get him on the cheap.
The Reds hired Bryan Price as P coach in 2009. He was Reds P coach in 2010-11-12-13 (the best years of the 21st century Reds). He earned pitching COY awards at Seattle and Arizona before the Reds hired him.
He’s retired but find somebody like him.
I wonder if the Reds could snag Caleb Cotham back from Philadelphia. He pitched for Johnson at Vanderbilt and was reportedly a big part of Johnson’s early success with the Reds. There will likely be a new manager in Philadelphia, which could create an opportunity. If there’s someone better, so be it, but Cotham could bring the right balance of internal familiarity and outside perspective.
Part of one of Reds worst trades in history. Caleb, Rookie Davis and Eric Jagielo for Aroldis Chapman. If I remember that was owner mandated. Since the trade Aroldis numbers are:
WAR W L ERA G SV IP H SO
15.5 44 32 2.66 592 256 554.0 341 856
Absolutely. Cotham pitched poorly, then was hurt before subsequently joining the Reds coaching staff.
Tony Renda was the 4th NYY received in the Chapman trade.
Digging into the pitching numbers, I wanted to find reasons for keeping Tracy but there wasn’t much to make a case with. That said, I would say for me there was far less screaming at the tv about pitch sequencing than in past years. Other than one good month (July), the pitching was consistently poor by any metric. One thing is clear, the OPS numbers on any kind of ball hit in the air are really high—they need to find/teach more guys to induce ground balls. I think we can agree DJ’s philosophy leans toward chasing strikeouts and that has unintended negative consequences (walks, high pitch counts). I see no evidence Tracy’s approach was any different, so put me in the camp of those calling for a national search.
Not so fun fact–opponents had a .583 batting average on bunts.
Anyone know what was Johnson’s contract status?
Just saw Valaika will be back.
That was the REAL firing that needed to take place.
I mean, who could look at this offense and think “You’re doin’ a heckuva job, Chrissy! Heckuva job!”
Staying with the norm. I would be shocked if Tracy isnt hired to be the pitching coach.
No matter how much a hitting coach matters I can’t see any logical reason to bring Valaika back. It most likely is an indicator that the Reds “still don’t get it”.
I think the fact that Johnson was heading a system-wide development scheme would mean the reds will seek to find someone to continue whatever that scheme has become…unless they give up on the concept. Since the idea was started in 2022, it may be to soon to tell if the scheme put in place works (who did we draft in 2022 and since and how have they developed?), otherwise you’ll have to unlearn 4 years of recruits. Notwithstanding this years poor performance at the mlb level, I think Greene, Lodolo, Abbott, Burns, Lowder (some of whom were in the system before the scheme began) have been promising home-grown talent.
I thought I saw where the Reds would not do that with this hire, and would instead hire two people for the two roles.
The Reds need to find an assistant pitching coach from a successful organization like the Guardians, Brewers, Rays, whatever and pry him away by offering him the director of pitching position.