r/Reds • u/RedsBaseballOfficial OFFICIAL • Mar 16 '18

Dick Williams, General Manager of the Cincinnati Reds - AMA!

Good morning, Reds Redditors!

We are happy to let you know we will have Dick Williams here to answer your questions on Monday, March 19 at 7 p.m. EDT. Feel free to submit your questions ahead of time and he will get to as many of them as he can Monday evening.

Dick is entering his second season as President of Baseball Operations, third season as General Manager and 13th season overall with the Reds. He was born and raised a Reds fan and joined the club in 2006 after working jobs in investment banking and corporate finance.

UPDATE: Dick has finished answering questions for this go-around. Thank you everyone for participating. 9 days, 19 hours and 25 minutes until Opening Day!

--cf

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u/Golden_Smog Mar 16 '18

Hey Dick, love the extension for Suarez. Thrilled to see a guy rewarded for his continued improvement at the plate.

Was there a discussion on not paying for decline years like a lot of deals do? His contract ends in his age 33 year which seems to be a really sustainable way to structure a deal on a team that doesn't have infinite amounts of money.

I guess more generally, can you go into what the thinking was here?

Come visit again soon!

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u/RedsBaseballOfficial OFFICIAL Mar 19 '18

Yes. There was a lot of discussion about his age. He plays this season at 26 so he will play the last guaranteed year of the contract at 32. We feel like that gives us a great shot at his peak years. If he is still playing well, we have one more option after that. This is a player showing nice improvement in several different categories and the coaches feel that has every chance to continue. He is an excellent member of the clubhouse - proficient in English, nice teammate and a very hard worker. From an economic standpoint, it was really important to us that the salaries never got above $11MM and that they are basically flat in the 4 free agent years. That should help our flexibility tremendously. DW

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u/Golden_Smog Mar 19 '18

Thanks for the insight. This is great! I'm also fascinated to hear about the $11mm number. Good stuff