Cincinnati Reds Press Clippings February 3, 2015 THIS DAY IN REDS HISTORY 1942-Owners decide to allow 14 night games for each club. Two All-Star Games will also be played, one with a military All-Star team. Curfews are set for night games, with no new inning starting after 12:50 a.m. CINCINNATI ENQUIRER 140 years ago: Reds join new National League Bob Strickley, [email protected] 11:35 a.m. EST February 2, 2016 The year 1876 wasn't a year to remember for the Cincinnati Reds with the exception of one development: they joined the brand new National League. According to the a historical timeline provided by the Reds, the team joined the National League on Feb. 2, 1876, along with teams from Chicago, Boston, St. Louis, Louisville, Hartford, Philadelphia and New York. The league was founded by Chicago businessman William Hulbert as a replacement for the National Association. Hulbert believed the NA was corrupt and mismanaged, according to History.com. The Reds' performance that year was, well, lacking. They finished last in the new league having just won nine out of 65 total contests, according to baseball-reference.com. The Chicago White Stockings finished first in the league with a record of 52-14. Fast forward to 1880 and the team was facing some off-the-field turmoil. That same Reds history timeline lists Oct. 8 with the description "Cincinnati is expelled from the NL, due in part to its refusal to stop renting out their ballpark on Sundays and to cease selling beer during games." CBSSPORTS.COM Reds' J.J. Hoover: Not locked in as the closer by RotoWire Staff Hoover might be the front-runner to win the Reds' open closer job, but he's not a sure-thing, the Cincinnati Enquirer reports. "I'm going to wait and see," manager Bryan Price said. "I think he's certainly a front-runner for this opportunity, but I don't think I'm quite ready to be assigning roles for on the team just quite yet. We'll see what the final roster looks like coming out of spring training. He's absolutely in contention for the position." Hoover's component stats didn't track along with his improved ERA in 2015, and skill set doesn't scream out lock-solid closer. Opportunity is the most important factor in evaluating potential closers, but ultimately Hoover will have to perform well enough to hold the job. Bid cautiously when it comes to Hoover. FOXSPORTS.COM Brisbane Bandits hoping German recruit Donald Lutz can kick on in US 8 hours ago by PAUL MALONE Source: The Courier-Mail IN THE nicest possible way, Bandits coach David Nilsson hopes not to have German Donald Lutz on his team next season. Lutz is heading back to his US Major League club Cincinnati Reds this month and if he is back to spend part of next summer in Brisbane, as he has done seven times, he will not have made the career progress he was hoping for. Coming off an eight-month elbow injury break, Lutz has contributed 26 RBIs in only 27 games for the Bandits going into the Australian Baseball League championship against Adelaide which starts on Friday at Holloway Field. Lutz, 26, played 62 MLB games for Cincinnati in 2013-14. “We hope he doesn’t come back. If he progresses, this won’t work for him,’’ Nilsson said. “His time with us has let him get his health under control in an environment which allows him to take on the Major League again. “Very rarely in Australia are you going to have someone with his experience, enthusiasm and character. “Just having him around the guys with the one-on-one conversations, we all feel like he’s part of the family. “Our line-up has been good and the other teams can’t isolate anyone, Donald or Justin (Williams) or anyone. It’s worked out being the best situation for him.’’ At the end of the best-of-three series which Brisbane hope will bring their first title in the reconstituted ABL, Lutz will spend a few days farewelling his many friends in Brisbane before re-entering the MLB maelstrom. “I know I will start in the minor leagues (for a Cincinnati farm team) and look to work my way up to the major league team,’’ said Lutz, who has played in several seasons for Brisbane club Windsor Royals. “I hope I do play here again. I love it here and have family and a lot of close friends here but I don’t know where I’ll be at that point of time (the start of next ABL season).’’ While Lutz’s timing with his hits when runners were in scoring positions has been good, Queenslander Mitch Nilsson is the leading RBI hitter for the Bandits with 39 from 55 games. Adelaide’s Kyle Petty’s 44 from the same number of games is the most of any Brisbane or Adelaide batter. Nilsson, who has settled in the third base role in recent weeks, spent his Australian off-season in a Czech league and partly credits the extra baseball there for his improved season for the Bandits. The post-Christmas addition of Lutz and Victorian pitcher Travis Blackley to the Bandits roster had given David Nilsson even more options. Brisbane shortstop Logan Wade missed 20 games this season with a shoulder injury, but his .315 average attests to the contribution he has made to the drive to the by the Bandits, who have not hosted post-season baseball this century. “I always knew Logan was coming back. It was a combination of giving him plenty of time to clear his head and it’s worked out perfectly,’’ David Nilsson said. “It was disappointing for him to have some time out, but it was fantastic for him to get some time off. We are getting the benefits of that now.’’ ESPN.COM Kings of Command: Pitchers poised to break out 1:27 PM ET Tristan H. Cockcroft ESPN Senior Writer Pitching is the name of today's game. In 2015, baseball set a record for the highest strikeout rate in history (19.5 percent of all plate appearances). Zack Greinke's 1.66 ERA was the lowest by a qualified pitcher in 20 years, and between his and Jake Arrieta's 1.77, two of the 14 best ERAs during the expansion era happened in 2015. There's only one logical reaction for fantasy owners: Continue to bargain shop for pitching. Wait ... what?! Counterintuitive as that seems, the age-old lesson remains apt. Remember, as league-wide pitching performance improves, so does the bar for what constitutes an ace. It's merely more important nowadays to acquire elite pitching stats, but that doesn't necessarily mean you need to pay a premium to do so. In fact, the past two American League Cy Young award winners, Corey Kluber and Dallas Keuchel, demonstrate that elite pitching is always available on the cheap, something as true in 2016 as in 1996. Remember, individual pitching performance remains more volatile than hitting, due to their smaller sample sizes -- by the way, starters' samples are growing ever smaller -- that make them more susceptible to random variance. Defensive influence and risk of injury are further reasons for this. This is why, when formulating a draft strategy, fantasy owners should rely more upon skills, evidenced by a pitcher's command numbers, rather than past rotisserie earnings. Yet, year after year, some owners fall into those same old traps. They want past proof. They want yesterday's stats. You, on the other hand, want today's and tomorrow's stats. Using command ratios -- a pitcher's strikeout, walk and ground-ball rates -- is a better way to identify the strongest future performers. Pitchers who command the strike zone, don't give up many free passes and minimize the most damaging contact greatly increase their chances for success. These arms are identified annually by meeting minimum baselines in each category, and they're called "Kings of Command." "Kings of Command" baseline numbers Pitchers who qualify for inclusion meet each of the following minimum baselines: Batters faced: 200 or more Strikeout rate (K% of batters faced): 16 percent or more Walk rate (BB% of batters faced): 8 percent or less Command rate (K's per walk): 2.50 or more Ground ball rate (GB% of all balls in play): 42.5 percent or more Last season, 735 pitchers appeared in a big-league game, and of those, only 91 met all five criteria. That group included American League Cy Young Award winner Keuchel, as well as pitchers responsible for 94 percent of the points tallied in the National League's Cy Young balloting, including winner Arrieta. It also included eight of the top 10 starting pitchers, and both of the top two relief pitchers, on the ESPN Player Rater. Max Scherzer (fourth) and David Price (sixth) were the top-10 starters who missed; Scherzer had a ground-ball rate four percent too low but he paced the majors in K's per walk, while Price was only two ground balls shy of qualification. But that group also included the following 10 pitchers, none of whom experienced quite as much fanfare, and none of whom finished among the top 60 starting or top 40 relief pitchers on our Player Rater. These pitchers, however, compared favorably to the former group in these command categories, hinting that greater fortunes might be in store for them in 2016. These "Kings of Command" are listed in alphabetical order, along with their statistics in the above categories, and a look at what they'd need to do in order to break through this season.