Being a Reds Fan is Utter Torture

 Being a Cincinnati Reds fan is literally the worst experience ever. Baseball season isn’t even that fun to me anymore from a fan standpoint because I cannot stand being a fan of this organization that doesn’t care about winning or about the fans. Every time we have a good player they’re gone within the next two years because “lining up the payroll” is more important than winning to the ownership of this organization. 

The most recent example of this occurring was this past offseason. Cincinnati fans were excited for the lockout to finally end because we felt like we had so much to look for. We still have Joey Votto, we have reigning NL Rookie of the Year, Johnathan India, MVP hopeful Jesse Winker, hopes of resigning fan favorite Nick Castellanos, top pitching prospects, Hunter Greene and Nick Lodolo, and returning talent on the pitching staff in Luis Castillo and Sonny Gray. Welp all that hope went down the drain in very quick fashion. A couple weeks after the lockout ended, we failed to re-sign Nick Castellanos, we traded Sonny Gray to Minnesota, and we traded Jesse Winker and Eugenio Suarez to Seattle. 

All of these roster moves were annoying in their own ways but the Nick Castellanos one is the one that fans, including myself, are most pissed off about. Castellanos made it abundantly clear that he wanted to stay in Cincinnati and yet we didn’t bring him back. And the owner, Bob Castellini, had the most ridiculous reason for not re-signing him. Castellanos’ agent called him and said that he wanted to return, and Castellini responded by saying that he wanted to improve the defense and optimize getting the young pitching talent to the big leagues. So basically his plan was, let’s not re-sign one of the best hitters in the league, in hopes of improving a defense that didn’t really need improvements. Read more about this here. 

These roster moves reignited a Twitter movement called “Sell the team Bob.” Bob Castellini is the worst owner in the league and doesn’t care a single bit about the teams success because all he cares about is saving money. When questioned about this Twitter movement on a radio show, Bob’s son Phil (who is the Reds President) responded by saying that the fans were ungrateful, and then he asked fans where they were gonna go if the family had sold the team. Then he basically threatened to move the team to a different location. You can listen to the podcast here. Then when questioned again about the comments he made on the radio show, he stated that “you can hate on us all you want, we aren’t going anywhere, we haven’t abandoned our commitment to winning.” 

Well their commitment hasn’t been a real effective one. The Reds are off to a 2-9 start to the season (soon to be 2-10 as they are currently losing as I’m writing this), and they are 0-7 and have been outscored 47-16 since Phil Castellini made his comments last week. So as you could imagine I, along with thousands of other Reds fans, are fed up with the ownership and are desperately craving change in the front office, because we deserve people who want to win. 

Feels weird saying this because of how historically bad the Bengals have been in my lifetime, but I REALLY cannot wait for football season. 

UPDATE: It is now the next day, and as I predicted, we are now 2-10, and 0-8 since Castellini’s comments.