Minor injury to Hunter Greene is still a major problem for the Reds

They’re stacking up!

Hunter Greene could not have looked any better on Wednesday night in Atlanta. He pumped in 101 mph heat while painting all corners of the zone, issued nary a walk, and struck out six Atlanta Braves in just 3.0 IP of work on the night.

Six of the nine outs he recorded came via strikeout. That he only recorded nine outs, though, could not have been much worse.

Greene exited early with what’s been tabbed as a groin injury, and as Mark Sheldon of Reds.com noted, the Reds ace will undergo an MRI to determine the severity at some point Thursday morning. The likelihood, however, is that he’ll need an IL stint, even if it’s for the minimum number of days.

Injuries happen to every team. That’s an undeniable aspect of major professional sports, and its something that front offices and managers know they’ll have to deal with well in advance. It’s why they assemble depth, build up farm systems, and hype versatility among their players to build against it ahead of time.

Still, it’s hard not to notice just how deep the Reds infirmary list has become.

Just yesterday we detailed the recovery statuses of the likes of Rhett Lowder, Wade Miley, Jeimer Candelario, Christian Encarnacion-Strand, Austin Hays, Sam Moll, and Tyler Callihan. That was back when Noelvi Marte merely had some pain in his side, news that morphed later Wednesday into an IL stint of his own for a strained oblique - an injury that’ll keep him sidelined for a good chunk of time. Add Greene to this list, and the Reds - who only recently got Tyler Stephenson back after a month on the shelf - have had to shuffle just about everything already this year with regards to their roster planning.

With Greene, the hope is that it’s merely a minor groin issue that costs him no more than two weeks. As Charlie Goldsmith noted on Substack, the likes of Miley and Sonny Gray have dealt with similar problems in recent seasons and each missed roughly that time, and the coming two weeks also feature two separate Reds off-days on the schedule - that, ideally, would mean a minimum stint on the IL for Greene would only leave the Reds needing one spot start before he returns to the rotation.

Still, it’s hard to even stomach the idea of Greene being sidelined for any period, as he’s just been that ridiculously good atop the rotation for the .500 Reds.

...for the .500 Reds.

That the Reds sit at an even 19-19 after 38 games is something of a minor miracle given who hasn’t been around for much of the year. And while the season is still very much early, it does feel personally like I’ve been treading water trying to evaluate the possibilities of this roster for weeks on end without truly being able to make a determination.

I can only imagine what Terry Francona, who’s trying like hell to learn this roster and how it blends together, has been thinking. How the heck do you learn a new team, who can actually play well, and how to put a lineup out there every day when you’ve got a new handful of injuries seemingly every day to juggle?

This team isn’t a good team who’s been doomed by injuries yet - they’re still .500, after all.

But just how good are they, really?

Is Austin Hays really a ‘big’ bat? Can CES actually hit big league pitching? Can Marte’s disastrous big league performance in 2024 be chalked up totally to missing 80 games and being rusty? Is Matt McLain really a star in the making?

38 games is not a lot, no, but it does still feel like almost every single question I asked of this roster prior to Opening Day has not yet been answered. Greene, to his credit, has been one of the true rock-solid locks on the roster, and now even he is going to likely need some time on the pine, too.

Even when it became hard to see where this team could go through all the injuries, Greene on the bump every fifth day was beacon enough to know they’d tread water until everyone else got back. If, god forbid, he’s out any longer than the minimum stint, this injury stuff has become a mess that just might set the Reds far enough back that it’ll be hard to envision them digging out of it.