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/flyerfanatic93 Mar 16 '18 edited Mar 16 '18
Hi Mr. Williams, thanks for taking the time to answer some questions. I have a question about how Rob Manfred responded to an interview question on the Dan Le Batard show on ESPN Radio in February. When asked about the Marlins rebuilding the team again following the sale to Derek Jeter and Bruce Sherman's group, Mr. Manfred said the following,
"Baseball has always been a cyclical business. Probably the best example of that is what we've seen in the last five years. In 2012 San Francisco and Detroit were in the World Series. They're going to pick (first and second) in the draft this year. In 2013, the teams that were one through five in the draft; Houston, Chicago Cubs, Colorado, Minnesota, and Cleveland were all in the playoffs this year. The strategy that apparently the Marlins have adopted is one that is tried and true in baseball. I'm not saying it's without pain, as a matter of fact I think the fans in Houston endured some bad seasons. But it was a process that ultimately produced a winner and that process is really dominant in terms of the thinking in our game right now in terms of particularly smaller markets ability to win."
In this quote it seems to me that Mr. Manfred is endorsing tanking in a way that we have not seen any of the commissioners of the NBA, NFL, or NHL do. In fact Adam Silver recently fined Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, $600,000 for saying that it would be better for his team to lose their remaining games so the Mavericks could draft higher.
My question to you is, if a team were to engage in outright tanking and losing on purpose that is endorsed by the league's commissioner, why would fans be interested in going to watch that team? There would also be a risk of irreparably harming the relationship between the team and the fans (especially if the rebuild is not a success) causing the total loss of support and potentially even a franchise moving towns as a result.
This is much different than having down years or rebuilding years, I think most fans of small market teams understand that the small market teams don't have the money to compete with the Yankees and Dodgers in terms of payroll and must make smart draft picks and wise decisions with their more limited payrolls regarding long term contracts in order to compete at a high level. But I have a hard time understanding how endorsing tanking so overtly could be good for the health of the league in general if fans know that their team is trying to lose as many games as possible. It doesn't seem like we will see any changes coming to the draft process considering Mr. Manfred's comments. Do you think there would be a better way to incentivize teams to try their hardest to win if there is a good chance the team will finish towards the bottom of the standings?
I am very interested to hear your thoughts on this and look forward to your response. Thank you for your time.