Baseball Prospectus put the Reds’ front office near the bottom of its 2026 rankings, slotting Cincinnati 26th overall in Jarrett Seidler’s look at the league’s 10 worst decision-makers. The Reds landed in the sixth tier, a group labeled: Tier 6: Bet you can’t tell, but it’s kind of a bad time.
Seidler’s first line on Cincinnati was blunt: “The Reds are the demarcation line from the outright bad front offices to the competent but not particularly good front offices.”
He credited the organization for doing a good job developing pitching from its higher-end draft picks under Derek Johnson, but he also pointed to the places where the Reds have come up short. His overall read was that they’ve “had an incredible run of mediocrity”.
That description fits the Krall era pretty cleanly. Nick Krall has run the baseball side since Dick Williams left after the 2020 season, and since then the Reds have made the playoffs once. Their best year in that span came in 2025, when they went 83-79, matching the same record they posted in 2021.
Cincinnati has not finished higher than third in the division during Krall’s time in charge. The same has been true of the previous regime, too, with the last time the Reds placed better than third coming in 2012. The source notes that Cincinnati did go 90-72 in 2013, but still finished third in the division that year.
Overall, Krall’s Reds have gone 456-500. Within that stretch, only the 2022 club was truly bad at 62-100.
Three other seasons finished with winning records, while another ended at 77-85. This year, Cincinnati is sitting at 69-77.
That’s not awful on its own, even if it has felt that way at times, especially since the end of April, when the Reds have gone 49-66. But it’s not good, either.
Any ranking like this comes with a built-in blind spot, because so much of what shapes a front office never becomes public. Owners can step in and veto trades, and that kind of interference has happened in Cincinnati and elsewhere.
Budget limits matter, too, both for the current season and future payroll flexibility, and those limits can swing a team’s outlook in a hurry. For clubs that aren’t spending $200 million a year, even a $10 million or $15 million difference can matter.
And that’s only the big-league picture. Player acquisition, development, and retention all factor in as well, and plenty of that work stays hidden from view.
Still, the ranking doesn’t feel out of line. More money might help the Reds’ front office operate with more room to maneuver, but the source also points to the Mets and Angels as reminders that heavy spending alone does not guarantee a front office will turn payroll into wins.
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Ichiro Cano has been one of the more encouraging names in that group, putting together a strong year with Daytona while batting .297 with seven home runs. Ruben Ibarra also turned in a notable season by setting a career high with 22 homers for Chattanooga, while former first-round pick Austin Hendrick continues to search for traction after dropping from Triple-A to Double-A. With the affiliates fighting to extend their seasons, there is still plenty of interest in how those player arcs finish out, even if the road has already gotten a little steeper. [Read more 🡒]