CINCINNATI — The Cincinnati Reds have fired manager David Bell after six seasons, making the move Sunday night.
The team announced its decision hours after a 2-0 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates, and they also named bench coach Freddie Benavides as interim manager for the final five games of the season.
“David provided the kind of steadiness that we needed in our clubhouse over the last few seasons. We felt a change was needed to move the Major League team forward. We have not achieved the success we expected, and we need to begin focusing on 2025,” Nick Krall, the club’s president of baseball operations, said in a statement posted on the Reds’ website.
The Reds are the parent club of the Southern League’s Chattanooga Lookouts, Cincinnati’s Class AA affiliate.
With a week left in the season, the Reds are 76-81 and in fourth place in the National League Central, 13 1/2 games behind the Milwaukee Brewers, who have already clinched the division championship. Cincinnati closes out the season with five road games, facing the Cleveland Guardians on Tuesday and Wednesday and the Chicago Cubs on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
The 52-year-old Bell — whose grandfather Gus and father Buddy both spent part of their careers playing in Cincinnati — was hired by the Reds in October 2018. He had a 409-456 record over six seasons.
In 2020, the Reds earned a postseason berth in Bell’s second year, when the coronavirus pandemic led Major League Baseball to shorten its regular season to 60 games.
The Reds finished the 2021 season with a respectable 83-79 record, good enough for third place in the NL Central. That season also produced an NL rookie of the year as second baseman Jonathan India won the award.
In 2022, Cincinnati lost 100 games for the first time in four decades. The Reds improved to 82-80 in 2023, despite leading the major leagues with 650 games missed by players because of injuries.
This season began with high expectations that Bell and the Reds couldn’t meet. An eight-game losing streak in May put them five games under .500. They strung together seven wins in a row in June to get back to one game under .500 but couldn’t sustain the success.
That lack of consistency would be a trend for the rest of the season.
The Reds swept the host New York Yankees in a three-game series on July 2-4 but again faded. They looked as if they could make a postseason run when an Aug. 12-14 sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals improved their record to 60-61. That moved them into a tie for second place in the NL Central with the Cardinals and within a half-dozen games of a wild-card spot.
Consistency was a problem again, though, and Bell lost three of his top starting pitchers — Andrew Abbott, Hunter Greene and Nick Lodolo — to injuries. Cincinnati is 12-8 in September.
During Bell’s tenure, the Reds brought along a talented young core expected to put the organization back on top, including India, Greene, Elly De La Cruz and Matt McLain, but Cincinnati hasn’t been able to get over the hump.
Bell was the third manager fired this season. The Chicago White Sox fired Pedro Grifol and three coaches on Aug. 8, just days after the team ended a 21-game losing streak that tied the American League record.
The Seattle Mariners fired Scott Servais on Aug. 22 in the middle of his ninth season with the team.
Krall plans to speak to the media on Monday at Great American Ball Park.