Bob Castellini is showing he has a little Steinbrenner in him. His lack of patience isn’t as famous as MFY owner George Steibrenner, but to those who have worked for him that lack of patience is legendary.
Wayne Krivsky didn’t deserve to be fired. The simple fact is Castellini probably wanted former Cardinals general manager Walt Jocketty to replace Dan O’Brien when he bought the team almost three years ago, but he couldn’t get him until this year because Jocketty was under contract in St. Louis.But Krivsky did a wonderful job reshaping the roster after all of Jim Bowden and O’Brien’s dead-weight contracts (Ken Griffey Jr., Eric Milton). He was brilliant at picking up young guys (Hamilton, Phillips, Volquez, Votto, Burton, Lincoln, Bailey, Bruce) for relatively nothing and stood firm on the few prospects the organization had from the previous management. His trades were often lacking, but he was always dealing from a position of having too many outfielders and teams not willing to offer enough because they knew Krivsky had to unload Austin Kearns/Adam Dunn or Josh Hamilton/Dunn because no one will touch Griffey and Castellini won’t allow Griffey to be traded until he hits No. 600 as a Red.
The Reds will turn it around once they start hitting, which is inevitable. I’m not sure if they’ll make the playoffs, but they’ll finish in the top 3 of their division and have a winning record. And Jocketty will probably get all the credit even though he did nothing to help form this team, while everyone will forget all the work Krivsky did.
I know, like they did when the Royals fired Allard Baird, if and when one of the Red Sox’ top assistant GMs get a GM position they will try and snatch up Krivsky for his scouting ability. The Reds could do a lot worse than Waly Jocketty, but they just fired someone who was Jocketty’s equal.
