The Cincinnati Reds have reached the point where the season is basically on life support, and that reality creates a strange little deadline problem for Nick Krall.
With the club sitting at the bottom of the NL Central and only the Colorado Rockies, San Francisco Giants, and New York Mets behind them in the chase for the final NL Wild Card spot, the Reds look like clear sellers with the MLB trade deadline approaching. The mood around the team has already curdled badly, too. What started as disappointment has turned into anger, and that anger has shifted into apathy, with a large chunk of the fan base seemingly checked out barely a week into July.
A lot of the frustration lands squarely on Krall, the president of baseball operations who has been running the show since October of 2020. Since then, the Reds have managed just one playoff appearance and no postseason wins.
For plenty of fans, that’s been enough. The criticism has gotten loud enough that many are ready for a change in the front office.
“I’m starting to think Nick Krall didn’t put together a very good roster.”
- Chad Dotson (@dotsonc) July 8, 2026
Still, even if a move on Krall feels inevitable to some, the timing doesn’t work. The MLB Draft is just days away, and the Reds have already put significant time and resources into preparing for it. A front-office shakeup that close to the draft simply isn’t happening.
The same logic applies to the trade deadline. Krall’s deadline track record has not exactly inspired confidence, but this is not the moment for the Reds to rip up the baseball operations department and start over.
In fact, this is one of the few deadlines where Krall’s job is relatively straightforward. The Reds are sellers. They have players on expiring contracts, and the cleanest path is to move those pieces for young talent and call it a win.
There may be other names that draw interest, too. Nick Lodolo and Spencer Steer could both come up in trade talks, among others. But if ownership is planning to move on from Krall after the season, those bigger calls should be left for the next president of baseball operations.
That’s part of the odd reality here: Krall has generally been better at selling than buying. He sent Tyler Naquin to the Mets for Héctor Rodríguez and Jose Acuña, and he also turned Tyler Mahle into a package that included Steer and Christian Encarnacion-Strand in 2022.
So while plenty of Reds fans would gladly move on from Krall later this year, that wait has to continue for now. The front office change, if it’s coming, will have to come after the August 3 trade deadline passes.
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