Cincinnati Reds president Nick Krall stands by trade deadline plan despite playoff results

Watching three wild-card teams knock out the best teams of the 2023 regular season to play this week for a spot in the World Series has done nothing to change Cincinnati Reds team president Nick Krall’s mind that he did the right thing by standing pat at the trade deadline after adding reliever Sam Moll.

“I don’t have any regrets not doing anything,” Krall said again this week, reiterating thoughts he shared with the Enquirer the final weekend of the season.

“I still wouldn’t have given up players on our roster for shorter-term assets,” he said. “You’re just robbing Peter to pay Paul, and you’re losing years of control with a lot of younger players. I just didn’t think it made any sense.”

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The Reds (82-80) finished two games behind the Arizona Diamondbacks for the final National League playoff and owned the tiebreaker against Arizona, which means two more victories would have put them in.

They lost six straight and eight of nine after coming up empty on deadline day Aug. 1, on the way to a 10-17 August.

“You could say, ‘Oh, you could have added this or added this,’ “ Krall said, “but at the end of the day — yeah, we had some COVID outbreaks; we started a bunch of (minor-league guys) that just came up — but at the same time, who’s to say that if we added somebody they wouldn’t have gotten COVID and been out for a period of time?”

Krall also pointed out that many of the starters traded at the deadline didn’t perform well over those final two months, with the conspicuous exception of Jordan Montgomery (4-2, 2.79 for the Rangers).

The asking prices also were especially steep, he said, including mostly young players off the big-league roster, along with top prospects who would debut later in infielder Noelvi Marte and starting pitcher Connor Phillips.

“Just about everybody asked for Connor Phillips," Krall said. "People were asking for Matt McLain and Spencer Steer and Christian Encarnacion-Strand. I’m not kidding. A team asked us for Andrew Abbott for a rental.”

Abbott was the club’s best pitcher after his debut June 5, a cornerstone in the exact position area Krall was trying to upgrade.

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Controllable good starters, such as Dylan Cease of the White Sox, didn’t get traded after weeks of trade talks.

Krall also suggested as big a problem to address was the club’s second-half decline in on-base percentage — which was exacerbated, if not caused, by key, monthlong injuries, the ongoing youth movement and Elly De La Cruz’s extreme second-half slump.

But the Reds’ 5.43 rotation ERA ranked among the three worst in the majors; the other teams at 5.00 or higher finished last. And it was an ongoing, predictable need, despite the hope pinned on injury returns of Hunter Greene and Nick Lodolo late in the season.

Lodolo never returned. Greene was inconsistent when he did (and missed time again with COVID).

And as big a problem as the rotation’s 5.43 performance was its dearth of innings pitched — creating one of the heaviest workloads in the game for its bullpen.

Would a handful of good starts from Michael Lorenzen before his ultimate move (by the Phillies) to the bullpen helped? What about Lance Lynn’s 4-0, 2.03 surge for the Dodgers in his first five starts (6 1/3 innings per start) before his shaky six-start finish?

Would the Reds’ internally beloved pitching infrastructure have helped provide a different outcome for any of the non-Montgomery pitchers who didn’t pitch as well as expected the entire two months?

Or maybe the ex-Red Lorenzen’s familiarity with the organization and ballpark? Or Lynn’s incentive to pitch in Cincinnati (he grew up near Indianapolis, has good relationships with manager David Bell and bullpen coach Matt Tracy, and told the Enquirer he grew up watching the Reds)?

If Lorenzen could be had for the No. 5 prospect in the Phillies’ bottom-10 farm system and Lynn could be had from the White Sox (with reliever Joe Kelly) for a minor-league reliever, journeyman outfielder (Trayce Thompson) and Baseball Prospectus’ No. 54 prospect, was there room for Krall to build a package around one prospect — maybe even a Christian Encarnacion Strand? — and take his shot?

What’s for sure is that Krall isn’t engaging in hindsight speculation or outcome bias, no matter what the playoff field looks like, no matter how close the Reds got (finally eliminated with one game left in the season).

“If you’re trading players off your major league club to go get rental players,” he said, “then it just didn’t make sense for us.”

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Why Cincinnati Reds prez Nick Krall stands by standing pat at deadline