Hunter Greene Has Bright Future for Cincinnati Reds, But Questions Remain

Greene has the stuff, now he needs to be consistent.

The Cincinnati Reds made Hunter Greene the first player of the next generation when they signed him to a 6-year, $53 million contract last April. 

After two solid seasons, we can clearly see the potential, but plenty of questions remain.

Greene continued his dominance of one statistic: strikeouts. He's struckout 30% of the batters he's faced in 237 2/3 innings of work over the past two seasons. In fact, his 30.5% mark from last year was good enough for ninth-best among pitchers with at least 100 innings pitched.

His walk rate is on the opposite side of the spectrum. Greene has the 19th-highest walk rate at 9.6% among pitchers that had at least 100 innings. It’s not just as easy as “throw strikes” though, as Greene threw almost the same percentage of pitches in the strike zone as did rumored Reds trade target Shane Bieber. 

So what is it?

Greene had almost a 5% difference in called strikes. Bieber had 19.2% of his pitches end up in called strikes, where Greene had 14.5%. The Reds young star also needs to do a better job of inducing hitters to chase after his pitches. He was in the 58th percentile for chase rate.

Opposing hitters had an average exit velocity against Greene of 90.1. That basically means if someone put a ball in play against Greene, it was like Will Benson hitting every time.

Then you add in the fact he doesn't keep the ball on the ground and you begin to see why Greene’s ERA (4.83) is in the “could be better” range. Greene’s ground ball percentage of 34.4% is an improvement from his rookie year, but still well below where it needs to be. Pitching most of his games at Great American Ballpark with that kind of ground ball mark will not make it easy on him to greatly improve that ERA number.

Can he develop a third pitch? that was the biggest question he faced coming into the 2023 season. He threw his changeup exactly the same percentage as he did in his rookie season (5%). The changeup may be the key to inducing more grounders,.

He may also benefit from adding more consistent movement to his fastball. There were games last season that Greene boasted a fastball that looked like a two-seamer and was deadly with it.

He has unlimited potential and still figures to be in a few Cy Young races during his career. Greene still has a lot of work to do if he;s going to maximize his potential. 

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