A few items of note to share out of the Queen City …
- The Reds funded Joey Votto's big contract extension with the $25MM per year they've received in revenue sharing over the past 10 years, writes Bill Madden of the New York Daily News. We've heard whispers previously that the Reds had drawn upon shared revenues to lock up Votto, though this seems to be the first mention of such a specific sum.
- GM Walt Jocketty said there's no updates on a potential contract extension for second baseman Brandon Phillips, tweets John Fay of the Cincinnati Enquirer. Jocketty, however, remains optimistic that a deal will get done within the next week or so, Fay adds. In case you missed it earlier this week, the Reds reportedly offered Phillips five years and $60MM, with a sixth year apparently being a stumbling block in negotiations.
- Reds owner Bob Castellini reiterated that Votto's extension won't interfere with the team's ability to extend Phillips or manager Dusty Baker, according to Joe Kay of the Associated Press. "It has no bearing on our conversations with Brandon Phillips and, hopefully, our conversations with Dusty as we go forward," Castellini said. Baker is in the final year of a two-year extension he inked after the 2010 campaign. This season marks his fifth on the Reds' bench.
Just say no to Dusty
id say no to dusty managing a meat market…
I almost want to throw up when I see somebody wearing those “In Dusty We Trusty” shirts.
Nope. It’s the guy managing the Louisville Bats. And a welcome sight he would be.
David Bell has three seasons of managerial experience, all at AA. His teams were losers every year, and their record worsened each season, culminating with an awful 53-86 campaign last year. Maybe Bell is a whiz at developing talent, but he’s yet to show anything that indicates he can manage a winning baseball team better than Dusty Baker.
He was offered a nice 4 and then 5 year deal. I like him. They can afford to have him back but now it’s him getting greedy or if you look at it another way….trying to squeeze more out of the Reds beacuse the Fans like this guy and everyone is feeling giddy after the Votto deal.
Let him try and see if he can get 5 from some other team and see what happens.
Either you want to really be here and 5 years at $65M is good enough to feed your family or you really do not want to be here.