Hunter Greene in Four
Welcome to the first edition of [Reds Pitcher] in Four! In this series, I’ll be taking a deeper look at individual Reds pitchers throughout the offseason — focusing specifically on their pitch mixes and results from the prior season.
While I can’t promise perfect grammar or release schedules (this is really just something to get my thoughts out in a better format than a string of tweets… and I don’t have an editor), I can promise to give you my fair and honest assessment of each Reds pitcher that I look into.
For the most part, the four aspects of each analysis will be:
A Quick Overview of the Prior Season
A Stuff+ Pitch Mix Similarity Analysis
Ways for the Pitcher to Improve
A Bullish & Bearish Outlook for 2024
…with a few additional components thrown in where relevant.
Today’s focus?
The Reds’ flame-throwing 24-year-old right-hander, Hunter Greene.
1. Season in Review
For Hunter Greene, 2023 was a season of highs and lows — both plentiful and to the extremes.
To begin the season, Greene paired the news of his 6yr, $53MM contract extension with a 2.89 ERA through his first 28.0 innings… but just as suddenly fell into a skid that would see his ERA balloon up to 4.68.
Not to be written off too quickly, Greene broke out of this skid with an electric 6-inning, 11 SO, no-hit start to beat the Cubs in Wrigley Field — and then went on a stretch that would bring his ERA down to 3.93…until being placed on the IL with a hip injury that would sideline him for more than two months.
After returning from the IL, Greene struggled mightily in starts against the Blue Jays and Diamondbacks, but then pieced together a string of three starts that rivaled the very best of his career from Sep 10 to Sep 20… until crashing back to Earth in his final two starts against the Guardians and Cardinals.
All in all, for everything that Greene’s season included, it seemed there was one ingredient missing throughout…
Consistency.
2. Stuff+ & Similar Pitchers
While Greene’s results were inconsistent in 2023, there was one constant: his Stuff.
(For more information on Stuff+ and Pitch Modelling metrics, check out this Fangraphs primer)
Whether he was mowing down batters at-will or getting rocked 15 rows deep into the stands, Greene’s 4-Seam Fastball and Slider consistently remained in the upper-120’s of Fangraphs’ Stuff+ metric (>20% better than a league average pitch) throughout the season, while his Changeup resided around 70 (roughly 30% worse than league average).
But how does that arsenal compare to the rest of Major League Baseball?
Using a Stuff+ Pitch Mix Similarity tool that I’ve created, we can see that a significant amount of Hunter Greene’s most similar pitchers by Stuff+ are… relievers.
This can be viewed in both a positive and negative light.
On a positive note, generally there is about a 3-5 point aggregate Stuff+ difference in relievers & starters (due to relievers’ ability to put more effort into pitches in shorter appearances).
Greene’s ability to deliver high-quality relief pitcher-like Stuff while also providing the Reds a starting pitcher’s workload is extremely valuable.
On the downside… 8 of Greene’s top 9 comparisons are relievers. End of sentence.
What Greene shares in common with these relief pitchers is an elite 4SFB/SL combination, with a relatively mediocre Changeup sprinkled in. While it’s rare for a starting pitcher to find consistent success with a 2-pitch (or 2-pitch + an “excuse-me” third pitch) arsenal, there is some precedent in the game today — the Braves’ Spencer Strider and the Brewers’ Freddy Peralta:
All three pitchers rely on above-average-to-elite 4SFBs that they throw >50% of the time and leverage a Slider as their go-to secondary offering. While Greene and Strider feature a Changeup sparingly, Peralta uses his a bit more — and also sprinkles in a Curveball (CU) as well.
Although Greene shares similar Stuff+ values and pitch usage metrics with Strider & Peralta — he does not share in the same degree of consistency or success.
Why exactly is this the case? Let’s take a look in the next section…
3. What’s Next?
As is the case in most of these scenarios, the answer to why Strider and Peralta are able to find so much more consistent success than Hunter Greene isn’t quite as simple and straightforward as you might hope.
Part of the answer — and a bit of a cop-out option — is that Greene was battling injuries and a late-season COVID outbreak.
When you remove Greene’s horrific starts against Toronto and Arizona after returning from his hip injury and his two late season starts returning from COVID, his ERA and peripherals fall much closer in line to what Reds fans expected at the beginning of the year.
Another, more difficult explanation is that Greene’s “Stuff” simply isn’t at the same level as Spencer Strider — and he may not be able to find the same success as a “two-pitch pitcher” because of it.
While’s Greene’s 127 Stuff+ value on his 4SFB is the 5th best among SPs in baseball to throw >100 IPs, the difference between it and Strider’s 141 Stuff+ 4SFB is roughly the same as the distance between Greene and the 17th best 4SFB in baseball. Strider’s 4SFB is a truly elite, one-of-one pitch for a starting pitcher.
And even then — Strider has still received criticism for his occasional struggles to pitch deep into games. Maybe it’s not reasonable to expect Greene to find consistent success as a B+ or A- version of Strider…
This presents another, more creative alternative — adding an additional pitch like Freddy Peralta.
Peralta, or “Fastball Freddy” as he was known when he entered the league in 2018, came into Major League Baseball as a two-pitch pitcher, like Greene and Strider.
However, after experiencing similar issues pitching deep into games, Peralta began to tweak his arsenal. First in 2020, he scrapped his Changeup for a new Slider — and he found the best success he’d ever seen in his career. Then, after some brief struggles between 2021-22, Peralta ended up adding back his once-scrapped Changeup and found success once again:
Can Greene follow this same path? Well… adding a new pitch is significantly easier said than done (contrary to what some on Twitter may lead you to believe).
Peralta had the luxury of adding a Slider to his pitch-mix — a natural complement to his 4SFB, and a pitch with similar movement to the Curveball already in his arsenal.
I’m not sure Greene has that luxury. A Curveball has a drastically different movement profile compared to every other pitch in baseball — which tends to make it a difficult pitch to add into an arsenal at the big league level.
Some potential options for Greene, though, could be experimenting within the arsenal he already has.
Greene’s 4SFB has shown a lot of variation in movement pitch-to-pitch (including Sinker-like movement at times) — could he harness that variability to add a second fastball to his repertoire?
There’s also a growing movement within baseball to develop distinct Sliders, Sweepers, and Gyro Sliders as opposed to one single pitch — could Greene benefit from building in a second version of his current Slider?
And finally, Greene simply does not seem to trust his current Changeup. Could it be worth taking the time in the offseason to experiment with a Split-Finger grip? Splitter usage across the game does seem to be on the rise…
4. 2024 Expectations
So all in all, what do we make of Hunter Greene?
Is he an “Ace” with a capital A right now? Probably not.
On one hand, Greene has two of the most dominant pitches in baseball in terms of pure Stuff and an elite strikeout rate for a starting pitcher. On the other… Greene only really has two pitches — and at the moment they’re not getting elite results.
Personally, my stance is to bet on process and the underlying data over results, especially for a player as young as Greene. Despite being only 24 years old, Greene has had a sufficient amount of time to test his Stuff against big league hitters, and is entering the offseason healthy and capable of making the adjustments necessary to succeed.
Most important of all, a pitcher with Hunter Greene’s talent is capable of unlocking a significant amount of potential with the smallest of tweaks. Whether it’s finally landing on a third pitch (or even adding a fourth) or taking his FF/SL up a notch, there are definitely paths for Hunter Greene to find success in 2024.
Final ruling…
Bullish
Rock-solid SP2, borderline SP1 (Freddy Peralta-esque)
170 IP, 3.60 ERA, 1.20 WHIP, 32 K%, 8.5 BB%
Bearish
HR issues linger, durability concerns become a trend
120 IP, 4.50 ERA, 1.40 WHIP, 28 K%, 10.5 BB%
Thanks for reading!
If you enjoyed this column or have feedback, feel free to reach out to me @RedsInFour on Twitter!
