Former Cincinnati Reds great Joey Votto told Foul Territory he believes there's an "underinvestment in the easy wins" from the team.
"I think that there can be ways to improve the organization as far as developing your minor leagues, as far as snagging the best talent," Votto said. "These are the things that very clearly the Brewers, Guardians, White Sox, and the Tampa Bay Rays are crushing. Why pinch pennies on the things that are quite a bit less cheap than that $18 million, that $23 million qualifying offer. What are we doing here? You can take a qualifying offer for a guy and you can completely overhaul everything about your organization. And I think there's just more efficient ways."
"The real question is have they gone all in integrating artificial intelligence into their organization?" Votto continued. "Have they hired a software engineer or a gaggle of software engineers to make sure that there's uniformity from top to bottom and ease of digestion of the data that a dietician or even the manager needs to understand. These are things that are cheap, cheap, cheap. And when I see tweets that say the New York Mets are hunting for this particular software engineer or a bunch of them, that's not that expensive, but it's going to create ease inside of the organization."
"Are they doing that?" Votto asked. "Is this something that they're adding to their potential chase of a championship? I don't know. You'd have to ask them."
In the same interview, Votto was asked what his top priority would be as general manager of the team.
"I would trade Elly for as many prospects as possible to start," Votto said. "Elly's going to get $650 million. Even if he doesn't get that number, he's 50 (million) to 60 (million) per year times seven, just to start, you know, let's say the CBA changes things. He's making 350 over the course of seven years minimum, six years minimum."
Votto shared earlier in the month that he got to see the clock he gave as a gift earlier in the year, during a visit to Crosley Terrace, outside the main entrance of Great American Ball Park.
In September, Votto replied to National Baseball Hall of Famer and Reds analyst Barry Larkin's rant that followed a 9-1 loss in the team's series finale against Chicago by tweeting, "Captain Lark 100 (emoji)."
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Joey Votto says Reds are underinvesting 'in the easy wins'