NL Central

On Tuesday, Reds fans look to the standings and finally see a winning baseball team. It took 70-plus games, but there is no denying the difference Reds fans have witnessed since the team got healthy. 

Cincinnati Reds fans will have now seen 30 percent of this list in live action following the debut of Carlos Contreras last Saturday. The young right-hander had a great outing in a low-stress situation.

Billy Hamilton has been scorching hot, and Tucker Barnhart continues to climb his way back up in batting average, in case he's ever needed again.

The rest have had mixed results. 

Baseball's best franchise is about to be tested.

At the trade deadline, the most important thing a team can have is assets. However, the second most important thing to have at the deadline is a trade partner. The Chicago Cubs have plenty of trade assets they seem willing to move and plenty of teams interested in those assets. 

With just over a month left until the trade deadline, plenty of moves could be made, and the Cubs seem like prime candidates to distribute talent to a bunch of contending teams.

News broke Friday afternoon that the Pittsburgh Pirates have removed Jason Grilli from the closer’s role, according to Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter Rob Biertempfel.

The Pittsburgh Pirates shocked Major League Baseball last year by winning 94 games and coming within a win of reaching the National League Championship Series, but this year's version of the team will have a hard time duplicating that success.

The Major League Baseball trade deadline has been greatly affected by the addition of the second wild card, but the Cincinnati Reds still need to do their best to address areas of need at this year's deadline.

Matt Holliday has always been in an odd place as a member of the St. Louis Cardinals.

While plenty of fans recognize him for what he has done, there is a certain faction that seems to always be looking for a reason to complain about Holliday.

The technical term for Andrew McCutchen's performance in 2012 and 2013 is "a hard act to follow."

All he did was hit .322 with a .932 OPS across those two seasons, with last year's National League MVP award being the bow on top of it all. It's hard to ask a guy to be any better than that.

The Cincinnati Reds' farm system is flush with young pitchers right now. A quick look through my most recent prospect rankings and you'll see that nine of the team's top 15 prospects are pitchers.

Of those nine prospects, only one is a can't-miss starter. That young man, Robert Stephenson, headlines the group of starters we'll analyze in this piece.