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This piece was originally published in The Athletic....

Twice since I started writing for The Athletic, I’ve authored pieces in which I’ve made bold predictions for the upcoming Reds season. Among my six big bold predictions prior to the 2018 season was an accurate foreshadowing of the starting pitching being a total mess as well as an inaccurate prediction that Joey Votto would win that season’s National League MVP Award. I accurately predicted the Reds would lose at least 90 games, a figure that seemed conservative when they were stumbling to a 3-18 start.

I made six more bold predictions before last season started, and among my other misses was a declaration that Votto would enjoy a big bounceback season from his ’18 output. I did kind of nail it when I claimed the Reds’ overhauled starting staff would yield improved, but not quite great, results. I was in the ballpark, so to speak, with my preseason guess of 78 wins, which exceeded the season’s total by just three victories.

On a legal pad that I’ve misplaced are the early renderings of this year’s bold predictions, scribbled while on an early morning March 8 flight from Phoenix to CVG. Since that flight back from a spring training trip that feels like it happened four lifetimes ago instead of four months ago, I really can’t remember what any of my bold predictions were going to be. I think I settled on 85 wins, and I’m pretty sure I jotted down something about how Votto’s season was going to play out, but I can barely remember anything else.

It would be a futile exercise to try to remember my original predictions, to amend them, or even come up with a new list. It’s hard enough to wrap my brain around the logistics behind ensuring the 2020 Major League Baseball season will unfold without interruption, so it’s almost impossible to get a firm grasp on how exactly each team will do and which players will shine.

I’ve never felt less certain about what’s going to happen during a baseball season, either with the Reds or the league as a whole. So instead of a list of bold predictions for the 2020 Reds, I have a series of 12 burning questions for the season that I’ve divided into multiple parts.

What kind of manager is David Bell?

I don’t know if David Bell is a good manager, which means I don’t know if he’s a bad manager either. Last year’s Reds team, the first skippered by Bell, ended up with a better record than any since 2014, not because they had a different manager, but because they finally had some decent players. They also failed to win enough games to seriously contend, not because their manager was bad at his job, but because they didn’t have enough players who were good at theirs.

No big-league manager is immune to criticism, especially in their first season, and particularly when they’re a bit of a philosophical departure from the men who preceded them. Still, it felt to me that some of the heat Bell took as the season wore on was a bit undeserved, mainly because those who took issue with his moves seemed more at odds with modern strategies than with how he ran his team. Aside from the times he’d get ejected by an umpire or the handful of times I wondered if he was taking a starter out of a game earlier than necessary, Bell seemed like more of an accessory to the season than someone who had much real influence.

I’m much more interested in how Bell manages this year, mainly because in a shortened season, it should matter more. When he met with the assembled baseball media via Zoom last week, he illustrated the ways in which his job has evolved, from being someone tasked primarily with producing winning results to someone charged with, well, managing the endless list of new health and safety measures. It’s hard to imagine Bell policing the social-distancing protocols in the clubhouse by walking around with a tape measure, and I’m sure he won’t be preoccupied during games with whether his players are engaging in now-banned activities like chewing sunflower seeds and high-fiving. But he sure made it sound like he’d have a role in ensuring that his guys are adhering to measures designed to make sure players are healthy, safe and available.

The added scrutiny on Bell will be how he balances the urgency of regular-season games that carry more meaning due to the schedule’s short length with ensuring pitchers aren’t overworked, bench players remain fresh, and that the bullpen isn’t completely gassed by late September. Much of the early spring training talk about the 2020 Reds was of avoiding the type of slow start that torpedoed their contention chances the last two seasons. Last year’s 1-8 stumble out of the gate was debilitating, and even as the Reds played respectable ball for large chunks of the spring and summer, their poor beginning blemished their permanent record like the barely passing grades I earned as a college freshman. Something similar this summer would devastate their chances of contention, particularly given the relative ease of their first two weeks of games.

How does Bell use the next few weeks to put his team in a position to start fast? There might not be a more important aspect of his job this year than what he does before the games begin.

Once they do begin, how well will Bell adjust to the new three-batter minimum rule, which removes the auto-pilot function from the decisions about whether to do things like bring in a left-handed reliever to face a lefty-hitting batter and vice-versa? What will the approach be with a player battling through a slump who doesn’t have months of games to get things straightened out? How will he best exploit having a full-time designated hitter while managing a team loaded with qualified candidates to fill that role? And how will he handle the extra-innings rule when each half of every inning beyond the ninth starts with a runner on second and no outs?

Thankfully, Bell’s answer last week in response to a question about the new extra-inning rule didn’t include the word “bunt” because giving away an out when you’re starting the inning with a runner in scoring position is a dumb strategy.

How and when will Bell deploy pinch-runners to begin an inning? Will he put opposing leadoff hitters on base to set up double plays? How will the three-batter rule shape his extra-innings maneuvers?

Extra-inning games are decided often by one play or one decision. On a year-in/year-out basis, the number of MLB games that go past nine innings is usually around 10 percent, which says the Reds will likely play in about six extra-inning games this season, each possibly hinging on one managerial decision. During a shortened season, particularly one in which the Reds must improve their winning percentage in games decided by one run (they had a .421 winning percentage in one-run games in 2019), the success rate of those decisions is likely to have a far bigger impact than usual on where the Reds finish in the NL Central.

Among Bell’s other challenges is whether he can keep his cool with the umpires. He set a new franchise record with eight ejections last season, often showing an admirable willingness to stick up for his players, but usually after a heated face-to-face confrontation with an ump. Is the Ejection King going to adhere to the rules that forbid such close interpersonal contact?

Claiming that such close encounters with the men in blue will be a thing of the past might be the easiest task Bell is asked to do in a season that’s guaranteed to invite more attention to how the manager handles his daily business than usual.

To read more, please go to The Athletic.

Mo Egger

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