(Photo Credit: US Department of Labor, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
Since Phil Castellini was promoted from COO to CEO of the Cincinnati Reds on July 31, the team is 0 - 2, but we shouldn’t draw conclusions from that. That’s too small a sample size. How can we know anything about him at this point?
Alright, maybe we know something about the guy. His bumbling, contemptuous and patronizing interview with Scott Sloan and Mo Egger on Opening Day back in 2022 is one of the most infamous moments in Cincinnati baseball history. But come on – he wasn’t even president and CEO yet! We all make mistakes. And he apologized.
Besides, there are plenty of examples of great leaders stumbling out of the gates. John F. Kennedy had barely begun to unpack his belongings in the White House before he approved the Bay of Pigs Invasion, which ended in total failure. A year and a half later, Kennedy was guiding the world from the brink of nuclear war. Is Phil Castellini our JFK? Like I said, it’s too early to draw conclusions.
If anything, we might get to find out how Phil Castellini can handle his own baseball-version of the Cuban Missile Crisis pretty soon. The mood in Cincinnati is pretty low after Blake Snell of the San Francisco Giants tossed a no-hitter against a hapless Reds lineup last night. It’s bad enough to get no-hit; it’s the pinnacle of offensive futility. But when the steady diet of factoids comes rolling in after the last out, what we learned made the no-no sting that much more.
We learned that Snell wasn’t just throwing his first no-hitter, but also his first complete game – and even the first game he’d pitched beyond the eighth-inning. This isn’t taking anything away from Snell (he is a two-time Cy Young Award winner), but what I want to emphasize is Snell, dominant as he is, is a known commodity. He’s pitched in the league since 2016, and advanced stats make it clear (his strikeout-to-walk ratio drops from 3.48 the first time he faces a lineup to 1.91 the third time, and his OPS allowed rises by over 100 points) that he’s not the same guy when he faces a lineup multiple times in a game. That made little difference last night.
But how can we assign blame to Phil Castellini? The sample size – remember? It’s too small.
We’re only two games in – we mustn't draw conclusions!
It’s not like the Reds' other loss in Castellini’s short tenure was equally embarrassing. Definitely not equal. Pretty close, sure. But equal to being no-hit in your own ballpark? Not quite.
The day the Reds promoted Castellini, the team was pantsed in front of the whole school by the Chicago Cubs in a 13 - 4 pummeling. But please don’t read into that. There’s no evidence the Reds are cursed just because they had their doors blown off the day Phil became head honcho. If anything, this team was cursed a long time ago – we can’t hold Phil responsible for that!
No, we need to give Phil a chance. There’s still time for him to become JFK. It’s time to ask not what your team can do for you – ask what you can do for your team! Buy some merch, go get season tickets, heck, go splurge on box seats! Trust that Phil has everything under control – after all, where else are you gonna go?
But given the Reds recent performances, it’s worth questioning if the team has similar reservations about their new president and CEO as the fans do. It’s possible they were left a bit shook by the Reds lack of activity at the deadline too. I mean, whether you’re buying or selling, at least commit right? The Reds chose to “thread the needle” as president of baseball operations Nick Krall said on Tuesday. Hmmmmm. Seems like that may not have been a realistic strategy, especially now that the Reds are sitting in last place as of last night’s loss. But don’t read into that.
Commentaires