The Cincinnati Reds have announced several personnel moves involving various departments. These moves will create openings the team expects to fill in the near future.
Chris Buckley has been named Vice President, Player Personnel, and he will have an expanded role in player evaluation for the organization. He will expand his focus beyond the amateur draft as his role will grow to include more professional scouting, international and other special assignments, in addition to a continued role with domestic amateur scouting.
Chris is in his 13th season with the Reds and his second as Vice President, Amateur Scouting. He has been responsible for many of the team's successful drafts, selecting players such as Todd Frazier, Mike Leake, Yasmani Grandal, Michael Lorenzen, Sal Romano, Billy Hamilton and Zack Cozart. Currently, the Reds have four of the Top 50 prospects in baseball, according to Baseball America. They all were selected in the last three drafts - Nick Senzel (2016), Taylor Trammell (2016), Hunter Greene (2017) and Jonathan India (2018).
Jeff Graupe will now serve in the role of Senior Director, Player Personnel, where he will be more actively involved in player evaluation and the decisions to acquire both amateur and professional players. In this new role, Graupe will continue to be based in Cincinnati and work closely with the front office.
Graupe is in his 13th season with the Reds, was named the Director of Player Development in 2012 and was promoted to Senior Director, Player Development in 2016. Under his leadership, the farm system has been consistently ranked in the top half of baseball and Baseball America named the Reds the #6 farm system in MLB as of midseason 2018. In the last few years, Graupe was responsible for several valuable Player Development initiatives including, but not limited to, the increased use of analytics, expansion of the coaching staffs, incorporation of leadership training for personnel, investments in improved nutrition and the addition of a rookie level affiliate in the Appalachian League.
The team also announced that Tony Arias will now focus primarily on domestic amateur scouting. Arias had been the Director of International Scouting since 2014 and was the Director or Latin America Scouting prior to that. Arias was responsible for several high profile signings in the Latin American market such as Aroldis Chapman, Raisel Iglesias, Alfredo Rodriguez, Vladimir Gutierrez and Jose Garcia. He has also been a part of many of the successful signings in the domestic draft from the South Florida area, such as Yasmani Grandal and Yonder Alonso. Arias will focus on covering the South Florida region for the team, as well as continuing to be involved in special assignments.
###