The Cincinnati Reds didn’t call up Nick Senzel this past week when Eugenio Suarez broke his thumb. They didn’t call him up later in the week once they reached the date in which they could have retained that extra year of control (Friday). Mark Sheldon of Reds.com asked Dick Williams about that decision. What we got was a lot of “GM talk”. Much like what the Cubs said when they didn’t bring up Kris Bryant a few years ago. Much like you hear from every general manager in baseball when asked questions like this. They can’t say ‘we think he’s ready’, or they’re going to lose a grievance to the Players Association and the player will get that service time they were being kept from.
With all of that said, let’s dive into something that was said, and why it’s leaving me scratching my head. There’s more to this entire quote, but I don’t feel this sentence is missing the context:
You want it (calling him up) to be more dictated by his performance and confidence as opposed to being dictated by the situation here.
This quote is a confusing one to me. If the Cincinnati Reds had kept Nick Senzel at second base the entire time he has been in Triple-A, it would be believable. But, the day after Suarez was injured, Nick Senzel slid right on over to third base for the Bats. And he stayed there for several days. The Reds kept losing at the big league level. They also got some good news back on Eugenio Suarez, who may only miss 4 weeks with his broken thumb. After that news came out, the next game saw Nick Senzel slide right on back to second base. And he’s played there ever since.
Now, I’m not Sherlock Holmes, or Bones, or some other fictional detective. But, if you want to claim you don’t want the call up to be dictated by the situation in Cincinnati, you can’t also have him playing third base for a few days between the injury to the third baseman and then immediately slide him back to second base the day you get good news on that third baseman. That just doesn’t track. The team was clearly thinking about calling up Nick Senzel and playing him at third base. They don’t make the position change that they did, for three days, otherwise. Whether it was the horrid start that changed their minds for a Friday call up, or the good news on Suarez and they figured they could get by another three weeks – or maybe both, I don’t know. But they were clearly thinking about making that happen.
As noted above – they have to say something needs to be improved upon in the minors. Otherwise, they’re going to be in trouble. It’s General Manager speak. He needs to work on this. Or we want to see that.
Maybe I am crazy. That’s completely possible. Heck, it’s even completely possible that I’m crazy for typing all of that above. But, all of the evidence points to the Reds actually planning on calling up Senzel to take over at third for Suarez until he came back, and then it changed before the date in which they would have considered calling him up to gain that additional year. And as I’ve stated in the last few days, since that didn’t happen I don’t believe we will see Nick Senzel until the Super 2 date passes. We will have to wait and see, but if I were a gambler, I’d confidently put money on that one.
At this point, between the Suarez news, and where this team is at, it just makes sense to save money on an extra year of arbitration. Now if only we could see Alex Blandino play at third base every day until Suarez gets back. But that’s another story.