Hunter Greene’s setback shows why there’s never too much pitching

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CINCINNATI — Hunter Greene’s return to the Cincinnati Reds’ rotation won’t be as soon as the team had hoped. Originally scheduled to begin a rehab assignment Tuesday at Triple-A Louisville, Greene felt tightness in his right groin and went for an MRI on Monday.

Though the medical staff is still conferring, the immediate result is Greene won’t begin his rehab assignment in the next couple of days as planned. Greene went on the injured list June 4 with a right groin strain. While on the IL, he went to California to get another opinion on his groin and received an epidural for back soreness.

“I’m not going to make my start tomorrow,” Greene said before Monday’s 5-1 Reds loss to the Miami Marlins. “I felt a little tightness, so it doesn’t make sense to go pitch when I still have a little bit of tightness.”

Greene said the tightness was “in the same area.” A team official confirmed that it is his right groin. Reds manager Terry Francona said the team was “really pleased” with what it saw on the MRI.

“I think there’s not a lot of confidence there yet, at times I think it feels fatigued,” Francona said after Monday’s game. “We want to do the right thing. Sometimes it’s very difficult — that’s why we got the MRI, because you ask someone to go out there and let it loose and throw it 100 mph, you don’t want them worrying about something. So we’re going to take some steps to try to give him a little more time so that when he does go out, he’s raring to go.”

The Reds don’t know exactly when Greene will resume his rehab. After visiting doctors in California last month, Greene rehabbed at the team’s facility in Arizona before returning to the club last week in Boston, where he threw to live batters Wednesday. He threw a bullpen Sunday in Philadelphia.

For several weeks, the Reds had expected Greene back “around the All-Star break,” which could’ve been on either end of next week’s break. Greene’s return will now surely be after the All-Star Game in Atlanta.

A year ago, Greene was pitching in his first All-Star Game. He had his best season yet in 2024, going 9-5 with a 2.75 ERA in 26 starts, but missed a month in the second half with right elbow soreness. The 25-year-old has made at least one trip to the IL in each of his four big-league seasons.

Greene was off to a strong start in 2025. After making his second Opening Day start, Greene was 4-3 with a 2.72 ERA in 11 starts before going on the IL.

The Reds are 16-13 since Greene’s been on the injured list. Greene was initially replaced in the team’s rotation by veteran left-hander Wade Miley. Miley made a pair of starts before landing on the IL himself. The Reds used an opener before calling up top prospect Chase Burns in late June.

Burns has made three starts — one good, one not good and one in the middle — and will stay in the rotation for the foreseeable future. The hope was that the Reds could feature a rotation with Greene, Burns, Andrew Abbott, Nick Lodolo and either Nick Martinez or Brady Singer. Martinez, who accepted the one-year qualifying offer last offseason, would also be perhaps the team’s best trade piece at the upcoming trade deadline.

In June, the Reds called up top prospect Chase Burns after Hunter Greene’s initial replacement also went on the IL. (Eric Hartline / Imagn Images)

Martinez’s versatility and willingness to move between the rotation and bullpen are not only unusual but also make him an attractive addition to any team searching for either rotation or bullpen help — or a pitcher who can help in the rotation for the rest of the season and in the bullpen in the postseason.

The Reds, however, still need someone like Martinez as well.

Burns, 22, has thrown 76 innings between the majors and minors this season. He threw 80 1/3 innings as a freshman at Tennessee, 72 as a sophomore. Burns threw 100 innings for Wake Forest last season but didn’t throw in a competitive game from June 1 of last year until March 6, when he threw an inning in a spring training game.

The Reds will monitor Burns’ innings and could move him into the bullpen at some point. In 2008, the Tampa Bay Rays brought their first-round pick from the year before, lefty David Price, up the next year after he was drafted.

As the Reds did with Burns and 2023 first-rounder Rhett Lowder, the Rays didn’t have Price pitch after a long college season following the draft. The top pick in the 2007 draft, Price threw 113 1/3 innings as a junior at Vanderbilt while playing for current Reds pitching coach Derek Johnson. Price, like Burns, pitched at three minor-league levels before making his big-league debut.

He pitched a total of 129 1/3 innings between the minors and majors, starting exclusively in the minors while making just one start in the big leagues in 2008. Price pitched out of the bullpen in the playoffs that year, appearing in five games in the postseason, with a win and a save against Francona’s Boston Red Sox before pitching two games in the World Series.

Before the season, the Reds showed their desire to have a deeper rotation, not only giving Martinez a qualifying offer but also, after Martinez accepted it, they traded for Singer.

The team’s depth has helped it deal with injuries to not only Greene but also Abbott at the start of the season, as well as Lowder and Carson Spiers.

Spiers, who went on the IL with a right shoulder impingement in April, is scheduled to pitch four innings for Louisville on Tuesday in Columbus, Ohio. Lowder, the seventh pick in the 2023 draft, started the season on the injured list with a right forearm strain and made four rehab appearances in May before suffering an oblique injury. June 4, the Reds moved Lowder to the 60-day IL.

It’s easy to dream of a Greene, Abbott, Burns, Lowder, Lodolo rotation — all Reds draft picks, all but Abbott first-rounders — but a look at just about any roster in baseball shows how difficult it is to count on five pitchers to make every start. The Reds nearly accomplished that feat in 2012 when their five pitchers combined to make 161 starts in the regular season, only to watch their ace, Johnny Cueto, leave in the first inning of the playoffs with an injury.

Even with the injuries to Greene, Abbott, Lowder and Spiers, the Reds’ top five starters — Lodolo, Martinez, Singer, Abbott and Greene — have accounted for 86 percent of the team’s starts, the highest percentage for the Reds since 2021, when the team’s top five starters made 88 percent of the starts. Last season, the Reds’ top five starters made 66 percent of the team’s starts, and in 2022, that number was down to 62 percent.

Teams will want pitching, and the Reds could be tempted to move someone such as Martinez or Singer for pitching-starved teams to get offensive help, but no team has ever had too much pitching. And though a lack of offense can hold a team back, a lack of pitching can stop it completely.

Greene should come back this season and maybe even by the end of the month, but the Reds can’t afford to gamble on his — or any one of their starters’ — being enough to make it through the season with hopes of playing into October.

(Top photo of Hunter Greene in June: Dylan Buell / Getty Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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