There’s a good chance that the Cincinnati Reds will have their ace pitching every fifth day down the stretch of the 2026 season. That’s the best possible way to spin the news that dropped on Tuesday, which contains the important caveat that Hunter Greene will have surgery to remove bone chips in his ailing right elbow and will miss between 14-16 weeks while recovering.
So relayed MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon earlier in the day on Bluesky.
Sheldon later spoke with Reds president of baseball operations Nick Krall who confirmed that Greene’s surgically repaired UCL “looked intact and good,” so there’s hope this arthroscopic procedure will be nothing more than cleanup to get him right back to 100%. Given that we’d already known about his elbow pain and stiffness and the MRI that came after it, that means that today’s news is more or less best case scenario within the framework of bad news we were already operating.
Still, it’s a major setback for both the Reds and Greene himself, who only started 19 games in 2025 due to various other ailments and who has never pitched more that 150.1 IP in any season of his career.
As for the Reds, they’ll lean on the envious starting pitching depth they’d accumulated over the last few seasons to bridge the gap until they get their ace back at some point during the summer. We already learned that All Star Andrew Abbott will get the ball on Opening Day to lead the unit, and he’ll be backed by Nick Lodolo and Brady Singer in some order, too. After those two, though, the Reds will be leaning heavily on the likes of Rhett Lowder, Chase Burns, and Brandon Williamson even though Lowder and Williamson both missed all (or most of) the 2025 season.
If there’s any consolation to this prognosis, it’s that Greene will almost certainly be placed on the team’s 60-day IL, and that will free up a spot on the 40-man roster for someone else should the Reds like to add someone not currently on the roster. Someone like, say, Nathaniel Lowe.
