THE BROO VIEW with Ken Broo

So the Reds now have two things the Bengals don’t have: general managers. Maybe they could loan one to the Bengals.

When the word came down Friday that the Reds had lured Walt Jocketty out of his short-lived retirement, my first reaction was…whoa, wouldn’t want to be Wayne Krivsky. Look at what Jocketty did in St. Louis. He only built the team that has more regular season wins than any other team on that half of the baseball equation. And there was that little piece of hardware the Cardinals won a couple of falls ago.

Jocketty was nothing in St. Louis if not the ultimate trade merchant. And he seemed to have an uncanny ability to trade nothing to get something. Sure the Mark Mulder deal stunk. Danny Haren will be a star for a long time in baseball and Mulder seems at the edge of washed up.

But how about these names that found their way to St. Louis on Jocketty’s watch: Mark McGwire, Scott Rolen, Larry Walker and Edgar Renteria.

His critics will argue that Jocketty built those Cardinals teams and worked those trades at the expense of his minor league system. The Cardinals had to trade for Mulder because their minor league pitching was awful.

But he also had the brains…and the scouts, to draft baseball’s best player at the moment: Albert Puljos.

With Walt Jocketty, there’s good with the bad. But there appears to be much more good.

But you wonder about Krivsky. He’s been on the job only a couple of years. So his drafts, unlike Jocketty’s, are tough to score right now. But they both seem to be cut from the same cloth. Jocketty was aggressive pursuing big name players. Krivsky has been aggressive trying to rebuild his bullpen.

My guess is Wayne Krivsky isn’t comfortable about all this. Even though he’s Bob Castellini’s hand picked general manager, Krivsky can’t be happy with Castellini bringing in the former GM of the National League team of the last decade and the former GM of the team Castellini once had a piece of. Jocketty will report directly to Castellini. Not good for Wayne-O.

But if Castellini can keep everybody in the sandbox happy, this has a chance of working out. Think about it: Jocketty’s experience and aggressive nature helping Krivsky with trade evaluations and draft pick assessments. Both have keen eyes, both have excellent contacts. It could be magic.

But it could also be a disaster. Invariably, when any company hires someone to over see the work of another with equal status, the atmosphere is tense. Distrust is the immediate by-product and camps can form. Jocketty apparently was in the middle of that scenario, when Cardinals owner, Bill DeWitt brought in a vice president for player development last season. Reportedly, that’s what led to Jocketty’s resignation in October.

If this is Castelllini’s way of lighting a fire under Krivsky, he’s done it. Never comfortable in front of the media, the current Reds GM appeared more uneasy than ever Friday. But Bob Castellini didn’t build a produce empire by fostering office politics. He knows, I’m sure, that if his front office gets bogged down in ‘camps’, he hurts his product. And remember, just about everyone in that baseball operations office is a Krivsky hire.

I would bet, that Castellini has told both Jocketty and Krivsky to play nice.
If they do, this will be a great ‘play’ for our ‘local nine’. If they don’t, it’ll be a great ‘play’ for the controversy loving media.