Photo: Redleg Nation Staff
There was bad news this morning from the Cincinnati Reds as they announced that Hunter Greene has both bone chips and loose bodies in his right elbow and will have surgery on Wednesday to clean that up. Mark Sheldon of Reds.com is reporting that Greene’s expected timeline to return is 14-16 weeks. That would put his return at some point between the middle to end of June.
This isn’t the worst news that could have come out of this, but it’s not exactly good news, either. A far worse outcome would be that he had damage to his UCL and needed Tommy John surgery, which would have had him out for all of 2026 as well as at least part of 2027. This isn’t that, but even if everything goes as expected on this timeline, the Cincinnati Reds are going to be without Hunter Greene for April, May, and at least half of June. Assuming the Reds would have gone with a 5-man rotation, that means that Greene will miss anywhere from 15-17 starts if he’s back by the very end of June.
Cincinnati has better starting pitching depth than most teams, particularly at the end of their rotation where guys like Chase Burns and Rhett Lowder would have easily made other teams rotation without competition for the #5 spot, much less having to be competing with each other to make the team. And that doesn’t include a guy like Brandon Williamson. Even in Triple-A the Reds will have depth with the likes of Julian Aguiar, Chase Petty, and Jose Franco.
Still, those guys aren’t Hunter Greene. While he hasn’t pitched a full season in either of the previous two years, he’s made 45 starts with a 2.76 ERA while throwing 258.0 innings and posting 10.6 WAR over that time. He’s one of the very best pitchers on the planet when he’s on the mound and the Reds need that as much anyone.
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