Cincinnati Reds spent on championship manager Terry Francona; will they spend on players?

Now what?

The Cincinnati Reds landed the biggest-star manager available in Terry Francona in barely a week flat after firing David Bell with a week left in the regular season.

They got their championship manager. Will he get a championship roster?

Given the Reds’ already budget-conscious history and significant uncertainty surrounding broadcast revenues, that first part of the equation might have been the easy part.

More: Reds manager Terry Francona sets the tone for 2025 with enthusiasm and attention to detail

Francona said the subject of payroll resources or specific off-season targets never came up during the whirlwind courting process that resulted in a three-year contract various sources suggest is worth at least $14 million.

“I hope you’ll never hear me talk about payroll, things like that,” Francona said Monday when he was formally introduced as the 65th manager in franchise history. “There will never be an excuse when we play a game, or lose a game, on our payroll. Once the game starts it doesn’t matter.”

After winning two World Series championships in big-market Boston, Francona proved his ability to get big-market results out of underfunded teams in Cleveland, where he won 90 games in 10 full seasons there and made the playoffs six times – including the 2016 American League pennant despite an injury-ravaged starting rotation.

But the question isn’t so much about whether Francona can get more out of less now that he starts the fourth chapter of his managing career after those two stops and Philadelphia before them.

It’s about how committed the highest levels of the organization are to giving team president Nick Krall what he needs to maneuver at least modestly enough this winter to improve a roster that needs to backfill some pitching and whose lineup could use at least one thumper – or short of that, maybe two or three above-average fielders to improve one of the worst fielding teams in the majors.

When asked whether hiring a high-profile manager like Francona puts pressure on the organization to put more resources into the roster, CEO Phil Castellini would say only: “Every resource we have we put on the field. Period.”

Not the most encouraging answer for fans who, for now, are being asked to respond to the Francona excitement and energy at the box office before knowing what, if any, big roster improvements are coming.

It’s easy to say Francona’s track record means his hiring alone will make a difference coming off this year’s 77-85 disappointment, especially coming two years after the Texas Rangers hired the similarly high-profile Bruce Bochy out of retirement and won a World Series in his first year.

And Francona said this about his impression of the Reds’ roster core as is:

“This is an extremely talented young team. That excites me a lot.”

But the Reds don’t have to look far to see the dangers of assuming the best manager on the planet can do it all.

Just up the road, and barely up the standings, in Chicago, the Cubs made the splash of last November with the shocking hiring of free agent manager Craig Counsell for a record $40 million deal. Then ran essentially the same team out on the field in 2024. And finished with exactly the same record in another non-playoff year.

So what are the Reds prepared to do next?

Budget meetings between business and baseball operations are scheduled for later this month but Castellini said the Reds may not even know what their TV landscape will look like for a month or two as they deal with the fallout of the latest news from the bankruptcy proceedings of Bally’s parent company, Diamond Sports Group.

DSG outlined a plan during a hearing last week that involved trying to renegotiate terms with five of its partner MLB teams, including the Reds.

That puts roughly $60 million in contracted revenue at stake in 2025.

“We’re probably as concerned as anyone else (partnered with DSG),” Castellini said. “But we’re naive enough that we haven’t prepared for a change and to be able to take on the challenge of whatever’s next.

“If we can continue (with Bally) that would be amazing. If we have to transition, we’d have a very viable partner in the league, in MLB Media. There’s a lot to figure out still We don’t have a resolution yet.”

Bottom line: Depending on how deep DSG wants to cut rights fees ‒ some have speculated perhaps 50 percent ‒ their partner teams might use MLB’s distribution safety net. But without revenues to be determined based on subsequent sponsorship deals at that point.

“It’s all fluid right now,” Castellini said. “Any revenue change is going to impact the team’s bottom lines in payroll. That’s just a mathematical fact.

“But we have been prepared for it and continue to be prepared for changes in the coming years. We’re prepared.”

He said ownership is prepared now to cover “a range” of 2025 payroll.

He wouldn’t say how close that will be to the 2024 level that might be.

That’s where the 30-to-60 days he estimates it will take to determine a team direction for 2025 broadcasts come in.

Meanwhile, the Reds could be paying upwards of $15 million for two managers the next two years, including the $4.9 million still owed to Bell.

Meanwhile, Francona is the last guy who figures to complain about it, especially after all those years in Cleveland.

“One of the thing I will tell our guys in that first meeting is that what’s important are our expectations,” he said.

“Normally, the teams with the most money are probably going to be at the top of the (prediction) list,” he added. “When I was in Boston, sometimes we could outspend some of our mistakes. When I got to Cleveland they were really good — I mean really good — about explaining (the resources) to me.

“I remember Mark Shapiro and Chris Antonetti sitting me down and saying, ‘Tito, you’re going to show up in April, and there’s going to be 3,000 people here, and this is our payroll. We don’t want you to get here and get frustrated.

"As long as people communicate with me, and I understand the expectation — my job’s to get the most out of players. I don’t need to run the payroll. I get a big kick out of trying to figure stuff out together.”

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Cincinnati Reds spent on championship manager Terry Francona; will they spend on players?