The Cincinnati Reds have fired manager David Bell. The timing of the move is interesting as there is one week remaining in the regular season, the club has been playing well this month, and it just seems strange to make the move now.
David Bell had two years (and a week) remaining on his contract. He signed an extension with the club in July of 2023 that ran through the 2026 season. He’ll get a few nice paychecks over the next two years while doing something other than work for the Reds. The team also announced that bench coach Freddie Benavides will step in as interim manager for the rest of season.
Cincinnati hired Bell prior to the 2019 season. Over the next five years he would have three winning seasons and two losing ones, going 333-375 prior to the 2024 season. Those three winning seasons were seasons that saw the team barely top the .500 mark in each of them, while the 62-100 2022 campaign really sunk the record during Bell’s tenure.
This season the Reds are 76-81. Another year of non-contention and simply being rather mediocre-ish. With his firing, Bell’s record in Cincinnati was 409-456. That’s a .473 winning percentage. That would rank him 23rd all-time among Reds managers who lasted for two or more seasons.
Managers aren’t always responsible for winning seasons or losing seasons. You’ve got to have the players to get the job done. It’s probably fair to say that the ownership and front office didn’t exactly hand David Bell competitive rosters in several of the seasons he was the manager. The 2020 season felt like one in which he had a good roster to work with, but the world went into chaos mode that year and we wound up with a 60-game season. And then this season seemed like the roster had a chance, but then suspensions and injuries piled up and things simply did not work.
With that said, there are plenty of valid criticisms about what Bell (and likely some of his coaching staff) did or didn’t do to help push the team forward. The lineups were often strange. It felt as if there wasn’t much accountability for repeated mistakes being made by the same players.
And then there’s always the fact that when losing continues that someone has to take the fall. And that someone is usually the manager. Ownership isn’t going to fire themselves. And the front office folks in charge of the evaluation don’t often point at themselves as the issue, either. Self preservation and all.
There is a whole lot of blame to go around in the offices at Great American Ball Park for the Reds and their losing ways. It’s been 29 years since the team last won a playoff series. Their farm system hasn’t had a full-season team win a league championship in 22 years. Since Bob Castellini’s ownership group has taken over the team the Reds have won the division twice in 19 years. They’ve never finished in second place. 19 years and only twice have they finished better than 3rd place. When it comes down to who is to blame it should be the Spiderman pointing at Spiderman meme, but with about 15 Spidermen wearing Reds hats.
Here’s the official press release from the team on the move:
The Cincinnati Reds have announced they are replacing manager David Bell, effective immediately. Bench coach Freddie Benavides will serve as the interim manager for the final 5 games of the 2024 season.
“David provided the kind of steadiness that we needed in our clubhouse over the last few seasons. We felt a change was needed to move the Major League team forward. We have not achieved the success we expected, and we need to begin focusing on 2025,” Krall said.
Bell, 52, was hired by the Reds in October 2018. He compiled a 409-456 record over 6 seasons, including a 76-81 mark this year. In 2020, the Reds earned a Postseason berth in his second season, which was shortened by COVID-19 to 60 games.
