Blue Jays hire former Reds manager David Bell to front office role

Bell formerly spent time in the Giants front office prior to his stint in Cincinnati.

It appears that former Cincinnati Reds manager David Bell has a new gig with a Major League Baseball club, and this time he won’t be in a position to get ejected from games on the regular.

Bell, who was tossed a club-record 31 times across almost six seasons as manager of the Reds, has been named vice president of baseball operations and an assistant general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays, as Sportsnet’s Ben Nicholson-Smith and Shi Davidi reported on Twitter Saturday evening.

It’ll be a player development role for Bell, something he should be quite familiar with given his role in charge of similar operations with the San Francisco Giants prior to being hired for a dugout role with the Reds.

Bell will have his work cut out for him from the start. At the big league level, each of Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. enter the 2025 season with it being their final year under team control, while the team’s farm system is currently ranked 23rd among the 30 MLB clubs (right ahead of the Reds in spot #24). Of course, that’s before things get working furiously during a hot stove season that’s already seen the Jays publicly interested in all-world free agent superstar Juan Soto.

Best of luck to David. It will be quite interesting to follow his interesting career path further, as seldom do we see baseball folk so quickly move back and forth from the front office to the dugout.