November 25: Per Mark Sheldon of MLB.com (Bluesky link), Napoli will be a staff assistant who is not officially on the coaching staff.
November 23: The Reds have hired Mike Napoli for an unspecified role within the organization, WEEI’s Rob Bradford reports (Bluesky link). Napoli spent the previous five seasons on the Cubs’ staff as a quality assurance coach and then as first base coach before being let go in October.
New Reds manager Terry Francona is quite familiar with Napoli, as Napoli played under Francona on the 2016 Indians team that fell just short of winning the World Series. Napoli hit .239/.335/.465 with 34 homers in 645 plate appearances as Cleveland’s everyday first baseman/DH, bringing plenty of pop to the club’s run to the American League pennant. That ended up being the second-last season of Napoli’s 12-year career in the majors, as his production fell off with the Rangers in 2017, and a return to Cleveland in 2018 didn’t result in any time at the big league level.
It isn’t yet known what Napoli’s duties will entail with the Reds, as the team has already announced its coaching staff for Francona’s first season as the club’s skipper. Co-bench coach Brad Mills and hitting coach Chris Valaika are new hires who also have past Cleveland ties to Francona, though the majority of the coaching staff are holdovers from former manager David Bell’s staff. Since there hasn’t yet been word of any sudden departures from the Cincinnati staff, a new position could be created for Napoli to join the mix, or is it possible Napoli is taking on a non-coaching job.
Party at Napolis
Save it til October. We got business to handle in the meantime
You seem like you’d be fun at said party
Hopefully he’s maintained his shirt-off dad bod!!
Reds getting all their holiday shopping done early this year.
I loved that he wasn’t fast but could read pitches heading for the dirt and steal bases. I haven’t seen that very often.
Reds owner to the GM: Just hire someone this offseason.
GM: Mike, you need a job? Boss wants me to hire someone. Not sure what you’ll do though.
Reds would’ve been better off making him unretire instead of hiring
Should’ve never been let go by the cubs. I understand the move. Craig Counsell wants his own coaching staff.
Wanted him on the Sox 🙁
He could play for the White Sox
Kk – I wanted him on the Sox too, but on the Phillies would have been cool. Perfect fit with those guys. Can you imagine Napoli and Schwarber together? It would be an updated version of The Man Show.
Great hire by Tito and the Reds.
I’m too traumatized to be excited as a reds fan but I have to say if I let myself be excited I would ecstatic at the moves they’ve made
As a Pirates fan, I understand the trauma. Allow yourself to be ecstatic even if only for a moment.
As a RS fan, it is now okay to dream. Tito has won 90+ in 12 of his last 19 years. The dude is like the Pied Piper with the younger guys.
Nap is a good guy, I hate that the Cubs let him go. He’s the one that worked closely with PCA on how to steal and run bases.. If he can get in Elly’s head, the kid might end up stealing 100 bases
I wanted Napoli to come to Pittsburgh for that exact reason. Nap has a great baseball mind. Caught my attention when the Cubs moved on.
Knows all the Cub dirty secrets
In 2011, he didn’t get a single down-ballot vote for MVP, despite hitting 30 bombs with a slash of 320/.414/.631. That’s crazy.
Coop – Only 113 games, that’s why.
The Rangers had 4 players in 2011 get down-ballot MVP votes and 2 of those players only got into 121 and 124 games respectively.
I’ll always wonder what could have been if Angels didn’t let him getaway and then totally rip Angels pitching. It seemed that it was not due to performance—at least not hitting—but due to Scioscia not tolerating any level of disagreement or healthy debate, which may be this is unfair as it is only my impression.
Keeping Napoli, avoiding the Vernon Wells disaster, and reallocating those funds to pitching would’ve been great.
Funny how things play out. I remember the Mariners being in on Vernon Wells and feeling like it was a huge loss when you guys snagged him
Didn’t play for Tito in Boston? Huh
Played for john farrell on the 2013 red sox then in cleveland for tito
Curiously enough, Farrell is a scout for the Reds.
It will be interesting to see what they have in mind.
Maybe he’ll be the power bat they’ve been searching for
Love ya Nap!!
he can back up Tyler – give Napoli a uniform!
Can’t be any worse than Maile was at the plate last year
He couldn’t be worse can the literal nobody they have now.
They are hiring for concessions
He can be coach of how to whiff every third at bat and still be popular.
His career nosedived after 2014 but he was a fine player up until then. To be fair, he didn’t exactly have the body to last deep into his 30s as a productive player.
He was heavy, but it always seemed like weight-lifter heavy.
Matt Stairs heavy.
They brought him up as a catcher. Cant have helped…
This is kind-of, sort-of, off-topic but since the Reds have always been my 2nd favorite team after the Cubs, I’ll throw this out to anyone looking for a couple good books to read; “If I Never Get Back”, and it’s sequel “Two In The Field” Both books are by Darryl Brock and are about a guy named Sam Fowler (who has always reminded me of Mike Napoli) that travels back in time from 1990’s California, to 1869 Cincinnati and ends up playing for the Red Stockings. It’s a highly detailed look at early baseball, and the 19th Century just after the Civil War. I have no life so I’ve spent a lot of time on Baseball Reference looking up all the real-life players mentioned in the books. For the life of me, someone’s really missed out on making this a mini-series.
Thank you for the suggestions. Those sound like they could be fun reads. I like the premise.
Hope Terry and Co. are ready for the drunken Napoli to make his presence felt every road trip
Great hire. The NAP DAWG sweats success and is good guy
Unspecified role, eh?
New Reds First Baseman?
Good hire. This guy was a smart player.
Love Nap!!! His bomb off Verlander only run in game 3 win 2013!! True professional….
Napoli! Napoli!
The old “special assistant”, which means whatever they tell him to do.
I still have my Party At Napoli’s shirt and I live in Cincinnati