Hunter Greene was a phenomenon from a young age. He threw a 102 MPH fastball and was on the cover of Sports Illustrated while still in high school. Ultimately, he was the Reds’ second overall pick in 2017 and was considered a future star.
Then, arm problems derailed his path to the majors. He finally debuted in 2022 and showed a lot of inconsistency and some durability issues along with some enticing upside potential.
It all came together last season when he worked his way to a 2.75 ERA as one of the league’s most efficient starters.
Here, I’ll talk about the adjustments he made before breaking out, why they worked, and what to expect from him next season.
I write these articles every week. Find out how Tarik Skubal became the best pitcher in baseball from last week.
Out with the old, in with the new
Greene mostly got by on raw talent in his first two seasons as a big man. Not the worst plan when your starting point is a high-90s fastball and a devastating slider. Yet his approach has become predictable with such a small arsenal and has achieved a disappointing 4.62 ERA over 46 career starts through 2023.
He showed a changeup about 5% of the time with the fastball and slider, but it was ineffective and unreliable. He only threw it 227 times in his first two seasons and opposing hitters started for a .333 expected batting average, .501 expected slugging percentage, and .358 xwOBA.
This field was finally trashed before last season in favor of a new separator and the impact was immediate. Just check the difference in results between the two locations.
Here’s the eye test on this splitter as well, just to be sure.
The improvement is even more striking considering he traded the changeup for splitters almost one-for-one. He used them much more often against left-handed hitters because right-handed hitters had their hands full of fastballs and sliders. Off-speed stuff is therefore reserved for left-handers.
Still, it’s cool to see how he’s thrown the different pitches in virtually the exact same situations year after year. Here are his pitch uses for his changeup.
Now here is its separator.
The only real difference is that there is a lot more confidence throwing this splitter in two shots, which we can attribute to the fact that it is more effective. Funny enough, the splitter was still extremely inconsistent, as many pitches are when they are first learned, it was so nasty that hitters had no answer.
It averaged 87.0 MPH with 1,202 RPM. This was the 11th hardest average spin and 12th weakest spin for any starter splitter, respectively. The terrain also had less horizontal movement and more drop – or killed more “green” for you nerds – than the rejected change. In turn, the Tips+ went from 59 on the shift to 120 on the splitter.
Additionally, he played much better with his fastball. Each had the exact same axis of rotation, meaning the rotation of the two pitches seemed indistinguishable to opposing batters from its hand. Greene spoke throwing the splitter like his fastball and how that mindset made it easier for him to learn.
With this, the two pitches could move away from each other and force hitters to make tougher decisions about whether or not to swing. His change did not have the same effect. Here’s a visual from Baseball Savant that can show this better than I can explain. The top image is from 2023 and the bottom image is from 2024.
The process, results, movement, patterns and eye test all agree that this splitter was a game-changer for Greene and a serious improvement over his changeup.
Don’t forget the fastball
The splitter has been making headlines regarding Greene’s breakthrough all season. Hell, that’s also where I started. How could you not? The new locations are fun and cool. Still, it’s possible that the changes he made to his fastball had a greater impact on his success.
Despite his blazing speed, Green’s fastball had a run value of -12 in 2023. That was good for eighth-worst among starting pitchers. Last season, it was the best in the league with 20 RVs. This remarkable turnaround occurred as his velocity increased from 98.3 MPH to 97.6 MPH (still very fast) and his usage rate remained steady around 55% (nearly the highest in the league ).
So what has changed? Reds pitching coach Derek Johnson praised Greene’s improved work ethic and routine last season. There was motivation for him to fix his fastball that had nothing to do with one of the least effective in the league. So Greene went into the lab and fixed the problem. Take a look at these differences in his fastball shape, measured in inches.
He raised his arm angle slightly, which helped him get behind the ball more. This allowed the pitch to “rise” more and run less. You can see its IVB – which means “Induced vertical rupture” – jump around a bit and go from below league average to above. This is the rising action I’m talking about.
Often, increasing the IVB of a fastball will help them miss more bats. Still, Greene’s fastball whiff rate has remained around 25 percent despite his new form. Instead, hitters could no longer field the pitch.
The damage disappears
One of Greene’s biggest obstacles to becoming an ace has never been his talent, but his home park. Cincinnati’s Great American Ballpark is the easiest park to hit a home run according to Baseball Scholar’s Park Factors and the third best place to hit overall, behind Coors Field and Fenway Park. Very few starters have become aces (shout out legend, Johnny Cueto).
The problem was compounded for a powerful, fast pitcher like Greene. These archetypes often launch into the zone, which gives way to more fly balls, and trade hard contact for more swings and misses. This can work in places like San Francisco or Miami. But not Cincinnati, where Greene had a 5.13 ERA in 2023.
That all changed last season with his new splitter and improved fastball shape. Now hitters would get under the ball rather than square it. Here are the differences in the quality of contact opposing hitters made against Greene over the past two seasons.
Truly day and night. We can take a look at New Savant Baseball Bat Tracking Data To put it more succinctly: Greene was faced the least often of all starting pitchers on balls in play and the third least on all swings last season. This data is new in 2024, so we have nothing to compare it to, but again, a night and day change from 2023.
Results
With these changes, Greene propelled himself into a new echelon of pitchers. He had the fourth-lowest ERA, 10th-highest strikeout rate, and seventh-lowest WHIP for all pitchers who threw at least 150 innings. With that, he was the 14th starting pitcher in Fantasy baseball last season according to FanGraph Player Evaluator.
(He also had the lowest ERA for any Reds pitcher not named Johnny Cueto since Great American Ballpark opened in 2003).
These 150 IPs were also critical. It was Greene’s first time reaching that plateau as a professional and he only narrowly got there after hitting the injured list with elbow soreness in August.
Everyone held their breath at this diagnosis. Greene already had Tommy John surgery in the minor leagues and a second one would have been nothing short of a disaster. Fortunately, he was able to return after about a month and pitch seven innings with seven strikeouts in two starts in September to finish his season normally.
What’s next
Let’s just say I’m…curious how all of these improvements for Greene will hold up next season. There are a lot of questions about how much control a pitcher has over the quality of his opponents’ contact, let alone using a barrage of fast, high balls in the league’s smallest ballpark that just passed from the bottom of the league to the top to limit hard contact. .
All the underlying stats show his results can be reliable to some extent, but Greene’s home run to fly ball ratio is down to 6.9% in 2024. That’s less than half his career average and nearly five percentage points lower than the league average. . Again, it’s even more shocking when you think about both how Greene throws and where he throws.
On the other hand, the draft market already appears to be experiencing some regression and general injury risk. Greene was chosen as the 25th starting pitcher off the board in the early drafts, between Freddy Peralta and Tanner Bibee.
They are all in this superabundance (or “The Globe » as Derek Van Riper put it so eloquently) of starting pitchers between picks 60 and 130 – or from Pablo López to Jared Jones – that you could convince yourself that there are all possible SP2s with moderate upside potential from SP1 if things go well .
This price tells me that Greene is still a value. The sheer desire he has shown to improve over the past year tells me his work is not done. What if his curveball became a real weapon? Or maybe the splitter takes a step forward or his mastery improves across the board. The foundation is so strong that any further improvement, even with slight regression, could make Greene one of the best pitchers in baseball.
