The Reds are staring at a future without Hunter Greene and, inside the clubhouse, they aren’t treating it like a dead end.
That’s the tension hanging over Cincinnati right now: Greene, the 2024 All-Star with the 100-mph fastball, had major elbow surgery in Los Angeles on Aug. 12, and by late that night the club still didn’t know the full extent of the damage. That uncertainty has put the Reds on alert as they think beyond this season, into 2027 and the possibility of a playoff push without the pitcher who has been central to their rotation since his 2022 debut.
From the front office to the pitching staff, the message has been the same. They’ll have to sort through every option. And they believe the internal answer may already be here.
“We’re going to have to look at all aspects of what we can and can’t do,” team president Nick Krall said.
The strongest case for optimism starts with the arms already in place. Several Reds said they believe a rotation built around Chase Burns, Andrew Abbott, Rhett Lowder and Nick Lodolo can hold up at a playoff level, even if Greene is unavailable for an extended stretch.
Burns is the obvious headliner. The hard-throwing right-hander is finishing a breakthrough, All-Star season with a 13-2 record and 2.61 ERA in his first full big-league year, and he’s done it barely two years after being drafted second overall. A month after signing a seven-year, $105 million extension, he looks like a pillar.
Lowder is pushing toward that same kind of importance. Drafted seventh overall a year earlier out of Wake Forest, he missed all of last season with injuries, then missed time this year because of shoulder soreness. Now he’s back and trending upward, looking more like the pitcher who debuted in 2024 with a six-start, 1.17 ERA.
“Rhett has started to look more like himself,” veteran closer Emilio Pagán said. “A lot of people forget the fact he missed a full year at a young time in his career.
That’s not easy to do. He’s starting to look more like the Rhett we saw in 2024.”
Lowder backed that up with his own words after pitching into the sixth inning against the White Sox on the night of Greene’s surgery. He said he feels “definitely” as good as he has all year.
“Things happen, and you find yourself in the middle of it,” said Lowder, who was charged with a second run in Cincinnati’s 5-0 loss to Chicago on Wednesday only because an inherited runner scored after he left a 1-0 game with one out and one on in the sixth.
“But it’s not like those guys go down and we just punt,” he said. “We all have to be ready to go. I think I stepped up in that aspect, and I’m ready to do that whenever.”
Lowder’s recent stretch has been steady: over his past four starts, he hasn’t allowed more than two runs in any outing, posting a 3.22 ERA with 16 strikeouts and five walks.
He said this season has forced him to adapt after beginning spring training without a locked-in role.
“Even coming into spring training this year, nothing for me was solidified,” he said. “I’ve had to kind of just fight to help any way I can.”
His path has bounced all over the place - from job-share starter late in spring training to rotation piece because of injuries, then to the bullpen when others returned, and back to the rotation again.
“I’ve been inconsistent myself, so that’s something that I’m learning from this year after missing the entire year and being able to come in and bounce around roles and just get more experience in different aspects,” Lowder said.
“So I think it’ll prepare me for next year.”
The Reds know they’ll need that kind of flexibility, because replacing Greene is no small task. He’s been a two-time Opening Day starter and put up a 16-9 record with a 2.76 ERA over 45 starts in 2024-25. Even with insurance on his $53 million contract, and even with the club’s past success patching over his time on the injured list, that’s a hole that doesn’t get filled easily.
“It’s obviously really, really tough, looking at the rest of this year and then possibly all of next year as well,” said Brady Singer, who could become another important piece after the front office passed on trading him at the Aug. 3 deadline and will consider a qualifying offer to keep him.
Krall said again this week that Singer could be a major part of a Greene-less plan, though the final shape of that will wait until the offseason.
“We’ve got to get to the offseason and see what happens with everybody and what it looks like,” Krall said.
Singer declined to get deep into his own future, but he did point to what Cincinnati already has going for it.
“The core of this group is really good, obviously with Elly and with Tito managing,” Singer said.
Abbott sees the same thing, even with the obvious blow of losing Greene.
“Losing (Greene) - it’s not fun at all,” Abbott said. “There’s not a better competitor.
He’s one of our guys. He’s the guy for us.
It’s a hard guy to replace.
“But we have the guys here. We have the guys that are developing below us to keep the ship afloat,” Abbott added.
“Chase’s development, Rhett’s development. That’s super important.
Retaining Brady is massive, to cover quality innings and as a quality teammate.”
For now, the Reds are leaning on what they’ve already shown this season: they can mix and match, survive injuries, and still put together good stretches of baseball.
“We’d like to be in a little different place in the standings this year,” Lowder said, “but I think we’ve showed we’ve played some good baseball at times and been just a little inconsistent and had some injuries. We’ve learned that we’ve been been able to do it, to put together some good ball without some of our top guys.
“I don’t think that that looking towards next year it adds any more pressure than it would be,” he added. “We’re all trying to win no matter what. No matter who’s out there”
Abbott summed up the belief inside the room in the simplest way possible: “The guys that we have, if we stay healthy, we have a chance.”
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