Photo: Doug Gray
Hunter Greene took the mound in Triple-A with Louisville on Sunday afternoon for his third rehab start. The Cincinnati Reds All-Star and Ace is working his way back from surgery in spring training to remove bone spurs in his right elbow that has kept him out for the entire season up to this point. He certainly looked like he was ready to go out and face big league hitters in his outing with the Bats.
After making one start in the Arizona Complex League on June 18th where he threw 4.0 shutout innings he moved up to Louisville. That’s where he pitched on Tuesday and he once again threw 4.0 shutout innings while raising his pitch count up to 64. Sunday saw him pitch even better. Greene allowed one hit in 6.0 otherwise perfect innings. He would strike out four batters, get six ground outs and six fly outs. His pitch count was 79 at the end of the 6th and he had thrown 52 of those pitches for strikes as he faced 19 batters.
He then returned to face the first batter of the 7th inning and things got scary for a second as the batter lined one back up the middle that Greene reached behind his back to try and snag and had it hit his glove, but it then went to shortstop where Dominic Pitelli fielded it and got the out at first. That brought Bats manager Pat Kelly out to the mound to make the call to the bullpen as Greene walked off the mound to an ovation from the home crowd.
During his outing Hunter Greene threw 37 fastballs. He averaged 98.8 MPH on those 37 pitches and he topped out at 100.1 MPH. He got two swinging strikes on the pitch. Greene mixed in both the slider and splitter quite evenly. The slider was thrown 23 times and he had five swinging strikes on the pitch on 11 swings. The splitter got four swings and misses on 11 swings and he threw 22 of them during the outings. That was good for 11 swinging strikes on 82 pitches (46 swings).
While it isn’t official yet, it seems unlikely that Greene is going to make another start in the minor leagues. He’s built up at this point to throw 90+ pitches and that’s enough to make a start in against MLB hitters. And it’s not like he needs to work on something, either. In his three rehab starts he threw 14.1 shutout innings, walked just two batters, gave up just five hits, and he had 13 strikeouts.
The Reds don’t have an off day until Monday July 6th. Where they slide Hunter Greene into the rotation could come anywhere between Friday’s home series opener against the Baltimore Orioles and Sunday’s series finale. It may just depend on how they want to handle both Greene and the rotation in terms of extra rest for someone. That said, it shouldn’t be unreasonable to expect to see Greene make his 2026 season debut at some point this weekend against Baltimore at Great American Ball Park.