CINCINNATI'S PITCHING PHILOSOPHY
BUSTER OLNEY of ESPN.com wrote this article about the Cincinnati Reds' philosophy of "pitching to contact".

The idea of "pitching to contact" is a good one. In general, it can be more efficient to get hitters out with two or three pitches than with five or six. And as my dad always said to me when I pitched "you can't get strike three without getting strike one and two first." It's a rather simplistic statement but actually makes a great deal of sense when you think about it. The theory of "pitching to contact" really sounds deceiving, because if done right the end result still has a lot of strikeouts. I always felt that it was more of a psychological trick to get pitchers to stop nibbling on the corners and to not be afraid to go after hitters. If you look at the 4 Reds pitchers with the most starts, you'll see what I mean.

K/9
Paul Wilson.....4.99
Corey Lidle.....4.80
Jose Acevedo....8.22
Aaron Harang....6.97

Even though the emphasis is on letting the batters put the ball into play, you can see that all the pitchers are still above the minimum of 4.5 K/9 in order that, unless you're named Mark Fidrych, is necessary to be effective.

The Reds now find themselves in first place in the NL Central, but whether or not their starting pitching can hold up remains to be seen.