The Cincinnati Reds have put together an enviable breadth of starting pitching heading into the 2026 Major League Baseball season. That’s a nebulous, bland, blanket statement on its surface, but it’s also very much emblematic of the fact that almost none of the cadre of starting-caliber arms they have down there is the same, or even in the same situation.
They’ve got a bona fide ace in Hunter Greene, the lone one amongst the group operating on a long-term contract extension. They’ve got Brady Singer,
a veterans innings-eater, who is in his final year of team control with free agency looming.
They’ve got a flamethrowing rookie with Cy Young upside in Chase Burns, and a mix-match command maestro in rookie Rhett Lowder – who’s own stuff is good enough to chase awards, too. They’ve got lefties in Andrew Abbott and Nick Lodolo and Brandon Williamson to match the might of their RHPs. They’ve got guys coming off lost seasons who’ll need to deal with innings limits, and guys like Lodolo and Greene still looking to complete full seasons to add that badge of honor (an incredibly lucrative badge of honor) to their already growing resumes.
It’s also unique in that it’s a group composed completely of players who were already within the organization last year, with nary a new starting pitcher brought in to camp on a big league deal among them. Even with Nick Martinez, who left for free agency following the 2025 season, they lost a guy who spent a ton of the end of the season pitching as a reliever despite his prowess as a starter, so their rotation options have been lined up for 2026 long before 2026 ever arrived.
The one obvious question that we don’t necessarily know about this group, though, is who becomes their workhorse.
Last season, it was Singer who topped the IP leaderboard for the club at 169.2, a number that marked the fourth straight season in which he’d topped 150 IP for his respective clubs. That edged out both Abbott (166.1) and Lodolo (165.2) for the team lead, with each of those numbers marking career-bests for the lefties. Greene, meanwhile, has the best stuff on the team (and perhaps in the game) with the best surface stats, too, but injuries once again limited him during the 2025 campaign and he fired just 107.2 innings.
If the mantra is truly have your best pitchers pitch the most, then it’s pretty obvious the Reds would love it if Greene ended up leading the team in IP this year. However, since he’s only topped 150 IP once (at 150.1 IP in 2024) and threw just 107 IP last year, I doubt the Reds are itching to see him chase 200 IP this season from a long-term (and playoff) perspective. Innings limits for each of Lowder and Williamson coming off injury will 100% be in play, while the team is going to be cautious with Burns due to his 2025 forearm issue and lack of overall IP experience, too.
Singer, a perfectly cromulent mid-rotation starter for just about any rotation in the bigs (including this one), may well end up being leaned on more to take innings off others this year and wind up leading the team in innings once again – all despite being perhaps the fifth or seventh most ‘talented’ arm on the roster. Lodolo or Abbott could power their way to 32+ starts and set new career marks, too, something that would inch both closer to being considered legitimate top-of-the-rotation starters nearing lucrative paydays.
It’s a discussion with no crystal ball, clearly. Who do you think ends up leading the 2026 Reds in IP?
