Press Clippings January 24, 2019 THIS DAY IN REDS HISTORY 1990-The Reds sign a three-year agreement with SportsChannel Cincinnati to carry 25 games a season on cable television.

MLB.COM Trammell among MLB's Top 10 OF prospects By Mike Rosenbaum MLB.com @GoldenSombrero Jan. 23rd, 2019

MLB Pipeline will unveil its 2019 Top 100 Prospects list on Saturday with a one-hour show on MLB Network at 8 p.m. ET. Leading up to the release, we look at 's top 10 prospects at each position.

Ronald Acuna Jr. headlined MLB Pipeline's 2018 list of the Top 10 outfield prospects before making his big league debut last April and garnering Rookie of the Year honors at age 20. He edged then-19-year-old Juan Soto, No. 9 on last year's list, for the award, though both players established themselves as potential generational talents.

In the , two-way star Shohei Ohtani captured the circuit's ROY award after checking in as MLB Pipeline's No. 4 outfielder prior to the season. Ohtani, of course, never actually appeared as an outfielder in a game and was limited by the Angels to designated-hitter duties. He still made an impact with his bat, slashing .285/.361/.564 with 22 home runs in 367 plate appearances.

It's very possible that we'll see another outfielder take home top-rookie honors in 2019, too.

Eloy Jimenez, who ranked second behind Acuna on last year's list, is MLB Pipeline's new top-ranked outfield prospect and is poised for success at the highest level. He and fellow White Sox prospect Luis Robert bookend a loaded Top 10 that's teeming with future All-Stars, all of whom could reach the Majors before the end of 2020.

The Top 10 (ETA) 1. Eloy Jimenez, White Sox (2019) 2. Victor Robles, Nationals (2019) 3. Kyle Tucker, Astros (2019) 4. Alex Kirilloff, Twins (2020) 5. Jo Adell, Angels (2020) 6. , Reds (2020) 7. Alex Verdugo, Dodgers (2019) 8. , Braves (2020) 9. Jesus Sanchez, Rays (2020) 10. Luis Robert, White Sox (2020)

Mike Rosenbaum is a reporter for MLB.com. Follow him on Twitter at @GoldenSombrero.

CINCINNATI ENQUIRER 2019 Cincinnati Reds pitching staff much more reliable, better than 2018 version John Fay, Cincinnati Enquirer Published 12:02 p.m. ET Jan. 23, 2019 | Updated 12:25 p.m. ET Jan. 23, 2019

Last year at this time, I’d get daily queries on Twitter asking me what I thought the Cincinnati Reds rotation would be. For a gag, I considered giving a different answer each time.

It was that much in flux. It ended up being , , Sal Romano, and Cody Reed. I don’t think I answered with that combination once, by the way.

Predicting this year’s rotation is much easier, largely because the Reds have added three who make the rotation, well, more predictable.

That’s a good thing.

The trades that brought right-handers and and left-hander didn’t make the Reds instant contenders, but the trades make contending a possibility. If the Reds had chosen to roll the dice with the young pitchers and hope against hope to salvage something out of Bailey – last year’s plan – contention would have been pretty much an impossibility.

The acquisition of Gray completed the rotation overhaul that was Job 1 of the offseason.

“Conceptually, we always wanted to add three starters if we could do so economically,” Reds president of baseball operations Dick Williams said. “We just thought that would really improve our overall depth.”

It does that. Castillo is only one of the five starters that began last year in the rotation to have a chance to make this year’s.

I can confidently predict that the rotation – barring injury – will be Roark, Gray, Wood, Castillo and Anthony DeSclafani.

The order? That’s not so predictable. The three starters the Reds added all fall into the No. 3 starter category. I could see any of them starting Opening Day, and I could see any of them being in the fourth slot.

To add three starters and do so economically and not give up top prospects and Taylor Trammell, the Reds did not go for a No. 1 starter, like Corey Kluber or .

Instead, they added three guys who are similar in this way: They aren’t coming off great years, but they’ve had great years in the past.

Roark, Gray and Wood went a combined 29-31 with a 4.67 ERA. And they threw an average of 154 . Not exactly ace numbers.

But, again, all three have been good in the past. Bookmakers have the Reds at 77 1/2 wins. For the Reds to make the bookies look bad – no small feat – Roark, Gray and Wood are going to have to get back to what they were.

So let’s look at the rotation (I’ll go with alphabetical order):

—Castillo, 26: He has the stuff to be an ace. He was 10-12 with a 4.30 ERA overall last year. A bad start ruined his overall numbers. He had a 3.60 ERA after May 8 and was 5-4 with a 2.44 ERA in the second half. I could see him getting the Opening Day nod if he has a good spring.

—DeSclafani, 28: He’s coming off a rough year as far as record and ERA (7-8, 4.93). But his WHIP (1.287 vs. 1.216), rate (8.5 per 9 innings vs. 7.7) and walk rate (2.3 per 9 vs. 2.3) were virtually the same as what they were in 2016 when he went 9-5 with a 3.28 ERA. For him, the key is staying healthy.

—Gray, 29: He is 59-53 with a 3.66 ERA overall. But he struggled in Yankee Stadium so badly that the Yankees gave up on him. Why? “That’s the question, isn’t it?” Gray said. His groundball rate, strikeout rate, walk rate and home rate weren’t much different in 2018 than when he was having his success in Oakland. The most significant difference when you study his fangraphs.com page? He threw only 35.1 percent in ’18. In 2015 when he was an All-Star, he threw 60.5 percent fastballs.

—Roark, 32: He went 9-15 with a 4.34 last year, but his WAR last year (3.4, according to baseball-reference.com) was the best of any of the five by far. (The six pitchers who combined for the most starts for the Reds last year had a combined WAR of 1.1. That explains a 95-loss season).

—Wood, 28: He’s only one year removed from a season in which he went 16-3 with 2.72 ERA and finished ninth in the National League Cy Young vote. His career numbers (52-40, 3.29 ERA) are the best of the bunch as well. He also gives the Reds a left-hander in the rotation. That was part of the goal when adding the three starters.

By adding the trio of veterans, the Reds increased the depth on the pitching staff. Mahle, Reed, Romano, Robert Stephenson, Brandon Finnegan and , all of whom made at least three starts last year, are likely out of the rotation plans if the aforementioned five stay healthy.

It should be noted that the Reds are likely to start the season without a homegrown in the rotation. Solving that problem remains the difference between sustained success for the franchise long-term. That’s another column.

But the patchwork the Reds did this offseason makes them a team to watch at worst and a contender at best. That’s a lot better than what they were at this point last year.

THE ATHLETIC Rosecrans: ready for next chapter of his story with Mariners By C. Trent Rosecrans Jan. 24, 2019

“You still have to be at the debut,” Shed Long told me as we were wrapping up our 15-minute conversation on Wednesday. “You said you were going to be there.”

I laughed. Because I knew I’d said that and even thought about that the last couple of days. I’d told Shed that I was going to be at his debut, just as much for me as I wanted to be there for him.

I thought it’d be easy. I cover the Reds and Shed Long was on the Reds’ 40-man roster. Until Monday, that is. After spending his entire professional career up until that point in the Reds’ system, Long was traded to the Yankees. He found out 30 minutes later he was then traded to the Mariners.

“Keep in mind,” Shed told me, “it could be in Japan. Tell them they’ve got the money at The Athletic.”

Two years ago around this time, I had an idea. I wanted to do a narrative podcast about life in the minor leagues. I’d heard a 30-minute podcast about life in the NBA’s G-League that left me wanting more.

I knew it would be a good way to tell the story of the minor leagues and I wanted to do it. So, as my wife and I drove to Savannah for a vacation, I planned it out. I’d do a series on minor-league life.

I had to sell it to my wife first, no easy feat. But when I told her why I thought it would work and some of the ideas, we talked about how to structure it. I’d have to find someone to let me bug them for an entire season, let me in and tell their story as part of the larger story.

My first thought was Shed Long.

I’d met Shed a week or so earlier at a stop on the Reds Caravan, talking to this young man who was an up-and- comer in the team’s minor league system. He wasn’t someone who was drafted in the first round, but a 12th-round pick who was more typical of the type of player who makes up most minor-league rosters.

Shed was also a Southerner, so we had some things in common. I’d talked to him and knew he’d have a good voice and was smart, so he’d come off good in the podcast medium. I also knew his then-agent, Brian Goldberg, who was based in Cincinnati.

I approached Goldberg first with the idea to see if Shed would be on board. I followed that with my editors at the Cincinnati Enquirer, to see if they’d buy in. Everyone agreed and Great American Dream was born.

Great American Dream ended up being a 12-part podcast, with Shed as the main character. I talked to many other people throughout the project, but Shed was the main character and part of every episode. My editor on the project, Amy Wilson, wanted a special section to wrap up the project in October, to run sometime around the .

It would be easy, she said, just rework something from the roughly 48,000 words I’d already written – and make it somewhere around 7,000 to 8,000 words. It’d be more editing than writing. That didn’t work, and I ended up writing another 10,000 words that then were meticulously edited down to 6,000 or so.

In short, I’ve written a lot about Shed. I’ve been to his parents’ home in Alabama, I’ve eaten breakfast at their table, I’ve seen the T-ball fields where he dominated. I’ve seen him in several different spots in the minors and, yes, I was looking forward to his big-league debut.

I thought about that as soon as Long’s name came up in trade rumors on Friday as part of a potential Sonny Gray deal to the Yankees.

Shortly after Fancred’s Jon Heyman tweeted Friday afternoon that the Yankee had interest in Long as part of a deal for Gray, Long got a text from a friend: “The Yankees.”

“What about them?” Long responded.

“Bro, you’re going to New York.”

Long got on social media and saw right away what his friend was talking about.

The next 72 hours were strange, he said Wednesday. He had Yankees reporters and fans messaging him, trying to find out what was going on. From a cruise ship in Cuba, I texted to see how he was doing.

It continued throughout the weekend and to Monday. Long didn’t know anything more than anyone else, but it was his future that was up in the air.

“Honestly, I was worrying about it, because I wanted to know what was going on,” he said. “But at the same time, it was like, I can’t control it. You just wait it out and see what happens.”

The reports changed and it became apparent that it would be him, not catcher , who would be moved if a deal was done. And then it just wasn’t done. He waited, wondering what was going on.

Then Reds General Manager Nick Krall called him sometime around 4:30 p.m. Monday. Long knew what was happening by the time the phone rang. Or at least he thought he did.

“(Krall) wished me good luck and all that,” Long recalled.

So, he was a Yankee. Or so he thought.

There was talk on social media at some point that the Mariners were involved. His agent, Nate Heisler, called and told him he thought the Mariners may be involved.

Around 5 p.m., he heard from the Yankees.

“(Yankees General Manager Brian) Cashman called me and said, ‘Hey, this is Brian Cashman, you’ve had a brief stint with the Yankees, you’ve been traded to the Mariners,'” Long recalled.

Then it was Seattle GM Jerry Dipoto who called and the two had a good talk. Long was a Mariner.

“I figured I had no business in New York,” Long said. “I don’t know why it was. I mean, it’s always a dream to be a Yankee, that’s the Mecca of baseball. Everyone knows the Yankees. I feel like it’s a better fit to be in Seattle.” It also got him out of in Florida, something he said he hasn’t heard too many good things about. He’ll instead stay on the west side of Phoenix.

Dipoto has since said the Mariners would look at moving Long around, maybe see if he can play third base or the outfield, especially with Dee Gordon already in the fold at second base.

Long certainly is aware of the presence of Gordon. He was actually in the car with Gordon when we talked on Wednesday. Long spends part of his offseason in Orlando, training with Hall of Famer and a group of players in what they call “Larkin University.” Gordon and his younger brother Nick are among the students at Larkin University. Long even stays at Gordon’s house.

Last spring, Gordon gave Long’s dad, also named Shed Long, Mariners gear including a hat that the elder Shed Long (better known as “Big Shed”) wears quite a bit, his son said.

“It’s a new slate,” Long said. “Obviously they like me because they traded for me, but I get to go in and show what I do. It’s like my career starts from here on.”

C. Trent Rosecrans is a senior MLB writer for The Athletic. He previously covered the Reds for the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Cincinnati Post and also covered for CBSSports.com. Follow C. Trent on Twitter @ctrent .

Commodore connection: Vandy ties could be key to a Sonny Gray resurgence By Lindsey Adler Jan 23, 2019

The trade that sent Sonny Gray to Cincinnati this week was the most foreseeable transaction of the offseason. Shortly after Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman told reporters after the ALDS that the team would move Gray ahead of the 2019 season, the Reds seemed to be the most logical destination.

At the end of October, (D.J.) left the Brewers to join the Reds as their new pitching coach. Johnson was the pitching coach at from 2002 to 2012, where he coached and… Sonny Gray.

“I’ve known D.J. since I was 14 years old,” Gray told reporters Tuesday. “He knows what makes me go. He definitely knows what I’m about. It definitely played a factor in it.”

Cashman had made no bones about his belief that Gray would be successful in a smaller market. The pitcher he acquired from Oakland in 2017 pitched to a 6.98 ERA at Yankee Stadium in 2018 and a 3.17 ERA anywhere else.

“Someone, if they trade for him, is gonna get the player we wanted,” Cashman said in October. But to trade him to recoup any sort of substantial value, the GM had to find a team that believed in Gray’s ability to recover from his 2018 season and see his value as a pitcher still in his 20s who is not too far removed from success.

Eventually, after beginning trade negotiations in December during the Winter Meetings, Cashman and Reds GM Nick Krall were able to establish with Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto a three-way deal that sent infield prospect Shed Long to the Yankees – then immediately to Seattle – in exchange for sending Gray and LHP Reiver Sanmartín prospect to Cincinnati. The Yankees then received outfield prospect Josh Stowers from Seattle and a competitive balance draft pick from Cincinnati.

Johnson told The Athletic he was consulted for his opinion on Gray as a person and as a pitcher, but said he was not heavily involved in the negotiations after that.

“I’ve known him since he was a teenager, so I do have a pretty decent history with him,” Johnson told The Athletic this week. “I do know some things about him that other people in our business wouldn’t necessarily know because I’ve spent a lot of time with him. But there’s also a lot of stuff I don’t know. I haven’t coached him professionally and he is older now.”

A condition of the trade was that Gray get an extension on his contract – he’ll now be under team control until 2022, a sign that the Reds are willing to take a big risk on his bounce-back season under a pitching coach he knows and trusts.

Gray told reporters this week his father was a Reds fan, and Cincinnati is the closest MLB city to Nashville, where he and his family (and Johnson) live in the offseason. He left a small market in Oakland in 2017 where he had a tight-knit crew of teammates to head to New York.

Johnson saw a pitcher in Gray at Vanderbilt who “has an instinct that is unique” in his approach to the game. The style aligned with what Gray had to offer on the mound: Good stuff, pitches that teammates have described as seeming to move with Jedi mind tricks, and a competitiveness that stands out in an industry full of intense competitors.

“A lot of pitchers I have been around don’t have it,” Johnson told The Athletic in 2018. “Instinct in baseball is really hard to describe, but I just have always felt like he knows certain things or has intuition toward doing something, and I think that’s where something like the creativity comes from.”

Johnson took an approach at Vanderbilt that aimed to turn his pitchers into creative and self-sufficient players. The majority of coaches in college call games from the dugout, leaving the pitcher and catcher to follow commands. College baseball is not the MLB affiliate farm system and the goal is still to win games.

But Johnson allowed his players to follow a gameplan. He and head coach instilled in their players an academic approach to learning about the game.

“At Vanderbilt, there was a huge classroom we’d go into before practice,” Gray told The Athletic last year. “We’d understand ‘The Mental ABC’s of Pitching,’ that book, we’d dive into that. I think D.J. would teach you to understand the game, and then you go out and play it so you just know. You just have a better understanding of what’s going on.”

Johnson taught his students from H.A. Dorfman’s popular book on pitching, and wrote his own book in 2012, called ‘The Complete Guide to Pitching.’ His own manual is considered to be one of the best books on the art of pitching, and in it, he focuses heavily on pitching with “conviction.”

“Conviction” is many pitching coaches’ favorite buzzword, and over the course of Gray’s inconsistent and unsuccessful 2018 season with the Yankees, that’s precisely what seemed to be missing.

At home at Yankee Stadium, Gray would shy away from the strike zone, nibbling at the corners instead of using his extensive repertoire to put a batter away. He seemed at times to be allergic to the two-strike count, drawing up his pitch count and working himself into early jams.

Gray told reporters after a successful eight-inning outing in Toronto in June that he had gone out to the mound with a clearer head.

“No thinking. No second-guessing,” he said at his locker in the visitor’s clubhouse. “You just throw each pitch with conviction and I was able to do that tonight.”

Johnson believes in throwing many variations of the same pitch, working with his pitchers and Gray in particular on experimenting with finger pressure to deliver a more unpredictable set of pitches. Johnson helped him develop his at Vanderbilt, which Gray eliminated from his repertoire last season after it was continually hard.

The issue was never said to be a matter of Gray’s “stuff,” from all public accounts. Cashman, Aaron Boone and pitching coach Larry Rothschild all saw great pitches from Gray, but an inability to make them effective. Catcher Austin Romine called it “dumbfounding” that Gray’s pitching wasn’t matching up with results. Gray’s spin on his is in the 94th percentile among all pitchers in MLB, and his in the 84th. The key now, in a different environment and with a more familiar face to work with, will be getting the “stuff” to actually work.

Gray and Johnson have kept in touch in the years since they each left Vanderbilt, and each is close with David Price, who also lives in Nashville. Johnson wasn’t able to see much of Gray’s 2018 season as it happened, but he told The Athletic that “something seemed strange because he did pitch well when he was away from home as opposed to how he pitched at home.”

“Certainly it was probably more psychological for him than it was about his delivery or the pitches he was throwing,” Johnson said this week. “It had to be something along the lines of how he was thinking.” Johnson said he thinks Gray learned a lot last year.

“I think he is really anxious to prove himself again and I think he feels really confident he can do that,” Johnson said. “Now it’s just a matter of him getting out there and getting going. I think once he does we’re gonna see a version of Sonny that we’re more used to seeing.”

For Gray, his lack of success at Yankee Stadium still seems to feel inexplicable. He told reporters this week that “I felt comfortable taking the mound,” despite other appearances.

“I just learned about myself,” Gray said of his 2018 season. “I learned how to fight through adversity more than I ever have. I’ve had adversity my whole life. I learned how to fight through, continue on and push forward.

“Sometimes stuff doesn’t work out for you,” the pitcher continued. “At the end of the day, I’m in a position now where I’m ready to go. I am overly ecstatic about it.”

Last season, Johnson described Gray’s 2017 trade from Oakland to New York as going from “the boutique shop to the Macy’s on 34th Street.” Now, with a lot more to prove after a disastrous year at the flagship store, Gray’s heading back to a boutique.

Lindsey Adler is a staff writer at The Athletic New York. Previously, she wrote for Deadspin and BuzzFeed News. Follow Lindsey on Twitter @LindseyAdler.

DAYTON DAILY NEWS Most recent acquisition could complete Reds rotation makeover Jan. 23, 2019 By Marcus Hartman

If the Cincinnati Reds pitching staff isn’t better this season, it won’t be for lack of effort by the front office.

Acquiring Sonny Gray from the on Monday was the latest move of a busy offseason for a team that hopes to halt a rebuild that has gone on too long for the taste of many fans in the Queen City and Reds Country at large.

“I think it started before, but at the winter meetings were when I had a decent amount of exchanges with (Yankees general manager Brian) Cashman in terms of ideas,” Reds president of baseball operations Dick Williams said after the trade was announced. “And then that went away for a while, but it came back around.”

In the time between the beginning of talks about Gray and the actual consummation of the deal, the Reds acquired right-handed starter Tanner Roark from the and left-handed starter Alex Wood (along with several other players) from the .

The Roark deal was done Dec. 12 while the winter meetings were still going on, and the Wood acquisition took place roughly a week later.

Though they never announced it publicly, Williams said the Reds went into the offseason aiming to add three starters to a staff that allowed the most hits, runs and home runs in the National League last season.

They ended up doing so without giving up much in terms of premium talent that is anywhere near reaching the majors, and comparing the numbers of the new guys to the Reds’ 2018 starters shows how the brass could improve the rotation for 2019 without doing anything drastic.

None of the new Reds starters had outstanding numbers last season, but they all would have been among Cincinnati’s top five starters — easily.

Wood’s 3.68 ERA would have led the team by more than half a run while his 151.2 innings pitched and 135 would have ranked second (behind Luis Castillo in each case).

His 1.3 WAR (Wins Above Replacement, which measures overall numbers against the “average” player in the league at each position) would have also been second among starters only to Castillo, who’s WAR was 1.6. Roark pitched 180.1 innings, more than Castillo’s team-leading 169.2, and Roark’s 146 strikeouts would have trailed only Castillo’s 165.

While Castillo’s team-best 4.30 ERA nips Roark’s 4.34 mark, Roark’s WAR of 3.0 would easily have been the best among Reds starters last season.

Gray had a down year, but the now-29-year-old righy’s 4.90 ERA, 123 strikeouts and 57 walks in 130.2 innings still would have put him in the discussion as the Reds’ No. 3 starter in 2018.

“Our primary goal this offseason was to address starting pitching, and we feel we’ve made some very good strides in that direction,” Williams said from Goodyear, Ariz. where pitchers and catchers are set to report Feb. 13 for spring training.

While Wood and Roark are set to be free agents at the conclusion of the 2019 season, Gray signed a three-year contract extension with a club option that could keep in in a Reds uniform through the 2023 season.

“We had him on a short list of guys we were interested in talking to,” Williams said of Gray, a first-round draft pick who was an All-Star in 2015 when he went 14-7 with a 2.73 ERA for the Oakland A’s. “And once we had the two guys with the one-year deals, we said we would only acquire Sonny if we were able to extend him. That was a condition of pursuing this trade.”

The acquisition of three veterans signals not only an urgency to end a four-year streak of last-place finishes but also a change in philosophies when it comes to building a starting staff.

After leaning mostly on a large-but-untested stable of starters the last two seasons blew up in their face, the Reds front office has given new manager three experienced pros to build around.

In so doing, they may be hoping to replicate the success of signing Jared Hughes and David Hernandez, veterans who not only posted strong numbers after signing with the Reds as free agents last year but provided some stability as up-and-comers , and Michael Lorenzen settled into their own niches.

Bell and new pitching coach Derek Johnson might only need to fill one spot in the rotation this spring, but they will have no shortage of options.

A half-dozen or so players who have had a shot over the past two plus seasons but failed to hold onto a rotation spot remain on the 40-man roster.

While some have had trouble staying healthy (Anthony DeSclafani, Brandon Finnegan), lack of consistency (Tyler Mahle, Sal Romano, Cody Reed, Robert Stephenson) has more often been the issue.

If nothing else, lack of competition no longer will be one.

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED Will the Reds' Ambitious Offseason Plan Work in the Loaded NL Central? By Emma Baccellieri January 23, 2019

Barring a disaster of injury or underperformance or overwhelming misfortune, the 2019 Cincinnati Reds will be better than the 2018 Cincinnati Reds. That is, of course, not a high bar. The Reds have finished in last place for four consecutive seasons, and given the strength of the NL Central, they will likely have to be much better to avoid a fifth. Will they?

When it comes to mapping out the club’s struggles, there’s ample blame to go around. This is a team whose most recent win totals read like a mediocre spring forecast—brisk, not quite balmy—at 67, 68, 68, 64. The bulk of the responsibility falls on Cincinnati’s starting pitching, which has been the worst in baseball over the last three seasons by a wide margin.

Choose virtually any metric that you’d like here and almost all of them will point you to the same answer. There’s an illustrative one in FanGraphs’ WAR: From 2016-2018, 29 teams’ rotations accumulated value ranging from 16 WAR (Chicago White Sox) to 60 (). Then there’s Cincinnati, in last place with 10 WAR. Sure, WAR is an imperfect metric with different formulas and different perspectives when it comes to evaluating pitching. But the fact that any attempt at a comprehensive metric can have a team this far behind? Yikes. And in that time, Cincinnati’s rotation has a 5.12 ERA and 5.14 FIP, with baseball’s highest rate. Not good!

The Reds have spent the winter ensuring that the 2019 rotation will be markedly different from 2018. In December, they traded for Tanner Roark and Alex Wood. Earlier this week, they added Sonny Gray and signed him to a three- year contract extension. (The Wood trade had the added benefit of shipping out Homer Bailey, who held the dubious honor of being the league’s worst starting pitcher last year.) Cincinnati’s three new acquisitions join Luis Castillo and Anthony DeSclafani, with a potential sixth man in Tyler Mahle.

This rotation shouldn’t be among the worst in baseball, but how far can it move up the leaderboard? Potentially quite a bit if 2019 Tanner Roark returns to a pitcher resembling 2016 Tanner Roark (151 ERA+) or 2014 Tanner Roark (131 ERA+), or maybe he’ll continue on the same path that he’s been on for the last two seasons (98 ERA+ in 2018, 96 ERA+ in 2017). Maybe Anthony DeSclafani will show that he’s made a full recovery from an elbow injury that led him to miss all of 2017 and a spate of poor performances in 2018. The biggest variable of all is Sonny Gray—who’s gone from finalist for the Cy Young in 2015 to injury-stricken in 2016 to solidly above average to 2017 and back down to well below in 2018. There’s a lot of upside for this group, but there’s a sizable gap between the ceiling and floor. Still, the floor is much higher than it was last year or the year before. On its own, that’s enough to offer some decent hope that the team is on its way to solving its biggest problem.

As for the rest of the team? The Reds have a strong infield and a remade outfield. In 2018, three of the four players were deserving All-Stars, and in 2019, they should benefit from the debut of top prospect Nick Senzel. 35-year-old ’s performance dipped last year, as his offense fell to its lowest mark in several seasons, but it didn’t change so much as to make him unrecognizable or ineffective. The Reds also beefed up the outfield this winter with the addition of , and the club’s other two regulars—Scott Schebler and —are each coming off strong seasons at the plate. The bullpen isn’t a strength, but Raisel Iglesias is a strong closer while Jared Hughes is coming off a career year as a setup man.

The 2019 Reds look like a different team, after what appears to be a concentrated effort by the front office. FanGraphs projects them for 80 wins, as Jeff Sullivan wrote about earlier this week. In a tight NL Central, that might not be enough to go very far. But it’s enough to make a markedly more interesting team—not quite contending for the wild card, but contending to be on the fringes of the conversation—and it should be enough for a win total that feels a little warmer, for the first time in years.

TRANSACTIONS 01/23/19 signed free agent LHP Drew Pomeranz. San Francisco Giants designated CF Mike Gerber for assignment. invited non-roster RHP Dario Agrazal to spring training.