Bradley Scheidler

More Takeaways from Phil Castellini, Nick Krall and Brad Meador Thursday morning: * PC on bringing in more investors for cash to strengthen free agent power/baseball ops, etc. "I think our focus is on is to stick to our strategy. Are we going to be open to discuss things like that in the future? I'm open to anything, but as of today, are there any plans to do that?No." * PC on the family chain of command: "You got to understand this is still a collective we, and that we includes the three of us in here as well as dad. So there is still very much involvement, and ultimately we, the collective, we also own the results and own the responsibility to make the appropriate changes to get better results. ... These guys (Krall, Meador) are going to make the baseball decisions, and it's our job to allocate the resources to them, and then it's their job to make the most out of those resources." * PC on why is the Castellini family the right stewards of the team? "I think we have a commitment to this city, and I'm a fourth generation Cincinnati guy, and we are passionate about this community and improving this community, and we respect and understand the value of what the professional sports in the city bring to the city, and that that delivery or the failure to deliver is not lost on us, and we're going to continue to work hard until we do. We're here. We're going to be here, and this isn't you know about investing in something to do a flip. This is about getting it right in the community for the community, by a leadership and ownership group that is predominantly from and live in this community. That's what this is about." * Asked PC about signing Elly De La Cruz long-term: "In the context of a full solution to executing on our goals, not just an individual decision about a player like Elly, who is one of those once-in-a-lifetime type talents that you see, and we've been blessed to have him, and continue to need to build around that talent. But ultimately, those types of decisions have to be in the construct of a total strategic plan for this franchise." * NK on Elly as a clubhouse leader: "You can be a leader as a younger player, right? Elly's a leader. Elly is a leader in the clubhouse, he's a leader as a guy that... he's your best player. He's also your hardest worker. He does everything that you need him to do from a you know from the standpoint of he comes to work. He puts in his work. He gets in the training room. He does everything in the off season and during the season, that you want to be a superstar marquee player. So I do think leadership comes from everywhere. It's not just like, 'hey, we're going to bring a guy and this guy's going to be the leader.' We've got to have some of our younger players step up. We need to bring some veterans in that also have some attributes to that." * NK on getting Terry Francona more back of the roster help: "Bleday's a guy that did a good job this year. We signed him as a low-level free agent. He did a good job against right-handed pitching. We probably need a complimentary platoon guy. Dane Myers, the guy that's really hit left, he's done did a good job in the role. He made he made some steps forward. Like a lot of these guys made some steps forward offensively, but I don't think we did a great job of giving Tito the the resources to platoon better to use better defenders. I mean, we had some guys up here that just that were not good, that were not good everyday guys or complementary guys, and we got to do a better job of that." * NK on Tyler Stephenson: "I talked to him on the last last weekend in Toronto. He's been here 12 years from when he got drafted in high school to where he is now. He's got the respect of everybody in that clubhouse. I think we need to take a step back and figure out: okay, what's it going to take? Does it help us move forward? And do we need to use that money for something else to improve something else? Can we go over here? I think we have a lot of questions that need to be answered over the next month as we approach free agency. But he's a great guy, and you'd love to have him back." * Other notes from NK: Dane Myers had a cleanup of his AC joint in the left shoulder, Spencer Steer's surgery on right wrist went well, Tony Santillan had successful hip labrum surgery, Everyone on the starting rotation except Chase Burns took a step back. Andrew Abbott "needs to get in better shape" Brady Singer and Nick Lodolo hampered by blister issues, Rhett Lowder took positive steps at end but needs to improve, Hunter Greene almost certainly out for '27. Matt Tracy and Oscar Marin both interviewed for Derek Johnson's job as pitching coach. Assistant hitting coach Will Remillard will not return.