Reds hat The Reds wear special hats for the 4th of July Weekend during the MLB National League game between the Cincinnati Reds and the Chicago Cubs at Great American Ball Park in downtown Cincinnati on Friday, July 2, 2021. An RBI double scoring two runs off the bat of Joey Votto secured the win for the Reds. Chicago Cubs At Cincinnati Reds

The Cincinnati Reds haven’t been very active in free agency. So when the team’s general manager spoke on the team’s lack of activity, his words were met with a lot of frustration.

So far, the Reds have made two ‘major’ free-agent signings. Cincinnati signed veteran catcher Curt Casali and free-agent outfielder Wil Myers to one-year deals. Those transactions were just passed through on Thursday. While teams like the Padres and the Mets are spending big bucks on free agents, they aren’t big spenders at all. In fact, they’re not really even spenders.

The team’s projected payroll is just around $91 million according to Spotrac. Their active payroll is only $48.925 million. But when you factor everything in (arbitration and estimates on pre-arb), it “soars” to $91 million.

So all that being said, when GM Nick Krall commented to longtime Reds reporter C. Trent Rosecrans about the team’s spending, it wasn’t met with much delight. Rosecrans tweeted, “When asked if there was more room in the budget for further acquisitions, Reds GM Nick Krall said they’d ‘have to get creative’ which is a way of saying not unless someone takes more money off their books.”

Reds fans and the MLB world alike blasted Krall, the Reds, and their ownership after that tweet pushed through.

Rotoworld’s Matthew Pouliot tweeted, “Seems like it would still make a ton of sense for the Reds to go get a Dominic Smith, Franmil Reyes or Edwin Rios.”

Vas Dramalitis of Amazin’ Avenue tweeted a running gag in the quotes: “But Steve Cohen is the problem with baseball.” Several Mets fans tweeted similar items as well.

Reds writer Doug Gray called Krall’s comments “a joke” and pointed out their egregious payroll disparity.

Cardinals writer Jeff Jones wrote, “FanGraphs has the Reds with an $81M payroll (only 18 players, granted), a quarter of which is dead money owed to guys named Mike.”

The Athletic podcast producer Derek VanRiper tweeted, “Strong Kruger Industrial Smoothing vibes coming out of Cincinnati.”

[C. Trent Rosecrans]

About Chris Novak

Chris Novak has been talking and writing about sports ever since he can remember. Previously, Novak wrote for and managed sites in the SB Nation network for nearly a decade from 2013-2022