Sept. 4: Price confirmed to reporters today that his 2018 option has been exercised by the team (Twitter links via MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon). “It’s a good thing, I think, for all of us because we’d like to see this thing through to the other side,” said the skipper.
Sept. 2: Manager Bryan Price will remain at the helm of the Reds in 2018, C. Trent Rosecrans of the Cincinnati Enquirer reports. Thanks to a clause in the contract Price signed last year, the Reds were required to inform him by Saturday whether they’d exercise his 2018 club option. However, the team actually assured him in July that he’d return, per Rosecrans, who adds that Price’s entire coaching staff will likely be invited back.
Next season will be the ninth in Cincinnati for Price, who served as predecessor Dusty Baker’s pitching coach from 2010-13 before taking over as the club’s manager. The Reds have gone just 276-355 in three-plus seasons under Price, haven’t won more than 76 games in an individual year during his reign and rank among the majors’ worst teams in 2017 with a 58-77 mark. That isn’t to suggest Price has been at fault, though, as the Reds are in the midst of a rebuild and have been devoid of pitching during his tenure. This year’s Reds entered Saturday last in the sport in ERA (5.29) and pitching fWAR (2.5). To put the latter figure in perspective, 34 big league starters and four relievers have posted an equal or better fWAR than the combined total of the 29 pitchers the Reds have used in 2017.
Given their woes on the mound, it’s no surprise that the Reds are toward the bottom of the standings yet again. There have been some bright spots this year, however, including the continued brilliance of first baseman Joey Votto and breakouts from young starter Luis Castillo, relief ace Raisel Iglesias and third baseman Eugenio Suarez.
The performance of a manager is difficult to quantify, meaning it’s unclear how much the 55-year-old Price has positively or negatively impacted any of the Reds’ players. Regardless, he and his staff have shown enough to general manager Dick Williams to warrant at least another year in the dugout.
I’m not surprised, but I’m not happy either. He’s supposed to be great with young pitchers, yet we have seen no progress in our pitching.
The bandbox they pitch in doesn’t help them too much.
That’s why we got a pitching and assisting pitching coach! Price is too busy managing the team to work with the pitchers! If I was the Reds I would have to look at their medical staff or there conditioning coach since pitchers are always hurt!
It’s just amazing. None of the other teams ever have injuries.
No progress? Bailey is looking better. Stephenson, Castillo, Mahle and Romano looking like a pretty solid rotation right now. Plus there’s Desclafani, Finnegan. With all of those guys pitching like they have been, you really only need one of Garrett, Reed, Stephens or Davis to be a success to have a solid staff for several years.
In terms of quantifying a manager’s success, is there any Pythagorean Record for managers? I know they have them for teams, but I’d like to see it for managers.
That’s about the only thing I can think of quantifying so you could determine how the “best” manager would do managing the “worst” team, and vice versa.
So… which manager’s teams “overperform” the most over the course of his career? Not just one year (where many things factor in), but over their careers. I’d be definitely curious to learn this.
Well, you could start with the difference between the Pythagorean W-L record and the actual W-L.
So a team that has a significantly better actual W-L than the Pythagorean W-L could denote a team that is winning close games, which might be partially attributed to a good manager.
Stephenson may have turned the corner. Garrett and Reed need some serious work though. They don’t throw strikes
Garrett will be fine, Reed not so much. Reed needs to finish this season in the pen so that he’ll bring some returns this winter
Rare case where ownership and management don’t hold a manager responsible for a sagging record. Reds pitching staff needs a lot of work, and Price may be doing the best he can with what he has to work with. This situation reminds me of SD a few years ago when Bud Black was hanging by a thread. Padres GM announced Black would return in ’15, and he did, but Black was fired in season. I see that happening to Price next year.
The Reds pitching issue comes somewhere between Pensacola and Louisville. Fire entire Louisville coaching staff and PAY professionals to get these kids ready
Sparky Anderson, Casey Stengel, Walter Alston would have no more success without pitching. Reds list top three starters and this dunk them. With improved pitching and hitting stable Price is Right!
At what point is he partly to blame for the lack of pitching? He was hired to develop players during a rebuild. Hitters have emerged, but no pitchers. That cannot be everyone else’s fault and not Price’s fault.
Yeah, I won’t go so far as to blame Price for lack of player development (that kind of thing is ridiculously difficult to measure and assign credit/blame), but it’s hard for me to see this as anything but unnecessarily retaining the status quo. I don’t know that he’s particularly helped the organization in his very long leash as ac manager.
Seems to be more of a pitching coach issue to me. Swap pitching coach Mack Jenkins with bullpen coach Ted Power, or completely replace Jenkins with Power, and I bet that would help
When your manager used to be the pitching coach, you’d kind of expect him to have a lot of input regarding pitchers, both to the GM and the pitching coach. At some point he has to be blamed for the lack of development. On top of that, I think Price is the worst field manager in the league and has been since the departure of Walt Weiss.
100%
It’s hard to give price a ton of crap for the way the pitching has been. They’ve been without desclafani and finnegan the whole year. These two were set to arguably be their top 2 starters this year. Straily turned a corner last year. It’s no surprise that their ERA is so bad when you’re throwing out the likes of tim adleman, Bronson arroyo, Asher wojche… post injury homer bailey. They just don’t have the personnel. Reed and Garrett have been huge disappointments though. They’ve seriously regressed but again pitching is the most difficult thing to develop. If Stephenson has really turned the corner it’ll make him look a lot better. Iglesias was a quality starter before his move to the bullpen, Lorenzen is Ann effective reliever.
His job is player development. The GM said as much at the start of the season – the team will be measured by player development, not wins and losses. So, if that’s his job, why are so many people willing to let him off the hook for the past three years of pitching development? Three years is enough to see what he can do.
His job is to MANAGE major league ready players, not train them. Just like the US Navy is finding out, OJT is not the way to learn.
I kinda feel bad for Price. He’ll guide them while they stink and as soon as they start to turn it around someone will decide they need a manager to “take them to the next level” and he’ll be toast.
Happened with the Cubs and the Astros. Price will occupy the role of manager through the dark times, and if they don’t use the “next level” line, it will be because the team needs a “fresh voice”.
Say what you want and make whatever excuses you want, BUT Dusty takes Reds to Playoffs 3 out of 5yrs and they can’t wait to run him out of town. This guy keeps get rewarded for losing. Ok, lets the payroll/rebuild excuses to justify this. I also can recall Dusty taking over a perennial losing team also, but I guess teams always win in spite of Dusty
When Bryan Price became the manage of the Reds they had a fairly good team with a above average starting rotation, and decent core of young positional players. He failed miserably with them. He has embarrassed himself multiple times the last several years. He had a major meltdown on a hometown writer that asked about a injured player Mesoraco (77 f bombs) and was even ejected before a game got started on 5/23/15. Bryan Price was a good pitching coach a terrible manager and team leader.
The Reds are not a good team, but they have the two most fun players to watch in baseball in Billy Hamilton and Joey Votto.
Trying to make the pitching coach a manager was a huge mistake the FO just cant seem to admit to
With very few exceptions (Bud Black), pitching coaches generally don’t succeed as managers. Joe Kerrigan was one of the best in the game, but his tenure as Mgr of BAL was horrible, and he was outta baseball completely once fired.
For some reason, I kinda feel that former pitchers and catchers are more likely to make a good manager, as handling the pitching staff is one of the most important and crucial aspects of the game. Of course, that is only in general.
Iglesias, Castillo, Romano, Stephenson, Mahle, Peralta. Look at the last dozen games for the Reds. They have some arms. Add Bailey, Desclafani, Finningan.
Bailey has been a rousing success this year. Do you in any way follow the reds?
I’m glad to see Price back next year.
Price isn’t to blame for the worst staff/era in MLB. These guys don’t seem to either grasp the concept of “walk kill” or just have such bad command that they can’t start. Being a small market team, they have to develop pitching and Castillo and mahle look like the only real young guys that will help. Romano isn’t a big league starter and with Bailey still feeling his way back- finnegan and disco (I hope) next year, all of a sudden we should be much better
Question is Why , The Guy loses more Game than year before and get rewarded by Good old Boy System !