Doc's Morning Line: This is the biggest mistake of the Castellini ownership era

Dusty Baker won his 2,000th game as a major-league manager Tuesday night. That’ll get him into the Hall of Fame. Eleven other skippers have at least 2,000 Ws. All but Bruce Bochy are in the Hall, and Bochy isn’t eligible yet, having retired just three years ago.

Letting Baker walk was the biggest mistake of the Castellini ownership era.

Or was it?

'This is his moment': Behind the scenes with Dusty Baker after his historic 2,000th win as a MLB manager

Now that the Club has fallen into the 3-20 abyss, it’s worth noting where it all went wrong. You can’t fix the future without recalling the past. Where have Reds gone astray since ‘06? How did they get to today, when some are suggesting they could be the worst team in modern baseball history? (They’re not.)

Doc's Morning Line: Dare the Reds at rock bottom? Nope, they have 140 more games.

Paul Daugherty: Zac Taylor came in strutting, without actually strutting. He was right all along

Do you cast your vote for letting Baker leave? He was here six years, the Reds won two Central titles and made the playoffs three times. The 2012 team was their best since the ’90 Wire-to-Wires. Then Cueto got hurt and the team collapsed, losing 3 in a row to the Giants in the NLDS. It has all faded to black since then.

There are other turning points that turned into disaster. Declining to deal Todd Frazier in 2015, because the All Star Game was in town and ownership didn’t want the visual of dealing one its better players at that point. Not pulling the plug on Cueto, Aroldis Chapman and Jay Bruce, when their trade values were highest. The returns they received for those four were below dismal.

Deciding to go big before the 2020 season, then deciding to go home in ’21 and ’22. Deciding last summer that no bullpen help was needed when the team was contending, before acquiring an OK reliever (Mychal Givens) too late.

Signing Joey Votto for a decade and $225 mil.

Completing last winter the destruction of the major-league club that began after the 2020 season.

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Am I missing anything? Does one of those items rank as your worst Reds decision?

Here’s mine, and to some of youse it will sound ridiculous:

Firing Wayne Krivsky on April 23, 2008, 21 games into his third season as GM.

Everything that has defined the current ownership era could be summed up in that one move. It even came with one of the current era's unintentionally defining quotes, from Bob Castellini:

“We’ve just come to a point where we’re not going to lose anymore.’’

The impatience, the indecision, the shifting philosophies. Krivsky had come to Cincinnati from Minnesota, where he’d apprenticed as assistant GM under the highly respected Terry Ryan. The Twins were a smaller market team that had found low-budget success. Something that even in 2006, was coveted in smaller cities with big baseball dreams.

Krivsky arrived and right away began making shockingly good, low-cost deals: Brandon Phillips for Jeff Stevens. Bronson Arroyo for Wily Mo Pena. David Ross for Bobby Basham. Josh Hamilton for nobody.

The Reds farm system was getting favorable reviews for its improvement.

Later, people within GABP would claim Krivsky had poor people skills, wasn’t a good communicator. And besides, they weren’t going to lose anymore. With Krivsky, the Reds won 80 in ’06 and 72 in ’07. They were 9-12 when he got fired.

Well, OK.

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Here’s where you might think I’m nuts. Castellini replaced Krivsky with Walt Jocketty. Jocketty did what The Big Man asked him to do: Win yesterday. He traded a hunk of Reds future for Mat Latos. (He also drafted Mike Leake. Props for that.)

The Reds won the division in 2010. They reached the playoffs again in ’12 and ’13. But they were not built for the long haul, the way all small-market clubs must be. Since ’13, the Reds have finished 4th or 5th in the Central six times in eight seasons, and will undoubtedly make it seven of nine this year.

And they’ve decided that going lean and local – payroll reductions, homegrown talent – is the direction they have to go.

The same way Wayne Krivsky intended, 17 years ago.

The writing was on the dugout wall as long ago as 2008. If only we knew then what we know now.

Now, then. . .

TYLER MAHLE is never going to reach his potential if he keeps throwing 33 pitches in the 1st inning. Or any inning.

FIVE THIRTY EIGHT, the stats-driven website, has a piece likening the current Reds to the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, arguably the worst pro baseball team ever,

". . . who lost 134 of their 154 games during the franchise’s final season of existence. Among their many statistical “feats,” the Spiders had six separate double-digit losing streaks (including one lasting 24 games) and lost 40 of their final 41 games.''

The Spiders were so bad,

“. . . after a few sparsely attended homestands in Cleveland during the first half of the season, the Spiders had to play almost all of their remaining games on the road. (Opponents refused to come to Cleveland because their share of the gate revenue was so low.) As if this nomadic existence didn’t guarantee enough failure, the Robisons stopped paying the Spiders’ salaries in the second half of the season.’’

Before the season. . .

“They bought a second team (what would eventually become the St. Louis Cardinals) and traded practically all of Cleveland’s best players to St. Louis, theorizing that the latter was a stronger market for attendance (and would allow them to play on Sundays).’’

HOW BAD WILL THE REDS BE? As stated a million times in This Space, the Big 162 is the Big Leveler. The Reds were going to be bad before 3-20. They’ll be bad, maybe historically so. But they should be better in the 2nd half than they are now, assuming Castillo and Minor are pitching and Lodolo and Greene are making progress.

They can do nothing about the offense, a fact I noted after about a week into the year. In fact, it could get worse, if they’re able to jettison Pham, Moustakas and Naquin to contenders.

58-104 sounds about right.

I WROTE FOR TODAY’S TRADITIONAL MEDIA that everything I thought I knew about Zac Taylor after two seasons was wrong. The constant “change the culture’’ references were an excuse for his instant lack of success, I said, in addition to being an unintentional slight to Marvin Lewis.

I didn’t like the inexperience of his coaching staff. I really didn’t like Jim Turner, his choice for O-line coach. (The linemen weren’t exactly thrilled, either.) I didn’t foresee the new and entirely unusual aggression displayed by Mike Brown’s heirs when it came to acquiring talent.

I thought Taylor deserved three years, maybe four. I did not predict it would end well.

That’s why Taylor coaches and I watch.

The fascinating aspect of the upcoming season will be to see if Taylor and the entire organization can develop some staying power. Last season was a dream. Very few injuries, nearly non-existent COVID issues, last-place schedule, Three Musketeers locker room, finding a groove at exactly the right time. That doesn’t happen often in the NFL.

In three seasons, Taylor has outlined clearly who he wants the Bengals to be, and how he intends to make that happen. He has never wavered in his devotion to Culture. He has not gloated. He seems the same guy today he was when he walked into the building.

It could all change. This is, after all, the NFL. But the Bengals have a chance to establish themselves as consistently successful, if they can keep Burrow healthy and paid. Props to Zac Taylor. Happy I was wrong.

AND NOW. . .

FunMaster David gets festive.

Festival season has returned in Cincinnati. it's time for the Funmaster to come out of hibernation. I'll be at Asian Food Fest on Court Street this Saturday and Sunday.

Featuring over 30 Asian restaurants and food trucks from around the area and live entertainment, this event enters its 11th year. Make sure you check out the full vendor list and entertainment schedule at asianfoodfest.org. The event is free. Live performances run continuously throughout the weekend.

ALSO: try a Toki Highball or Midori frozen slush, cocktails specifically designed for this event.

Elsewhere, celebrate Cinco de Mayo a few days late with the return of Cincy-Cinco at Fountain Square this weekend. The two-day fiesta features live music and dance from the area's best Latino performers, as well as food vendors and for the first time a Latino job fair. The food options include fried plantains, elotes, and of course, tacos.

Next week is Smoke on the River BBQ Fest in Covington.

TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . This guy made a couple very good albums, even if did try too hard to be Hendrix Lite.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Cincinnati Reds losing streak: How Dusty Baker firing influenced club