After 2024 breakout, Hunter Greene taking it to a new level

Is Hunter Greene reaching his full potential? The early returns in 2025 are encouraging.

Long on the baseball radar -- he was a two-way star at a California high school before the Reds took him No. 2 overall in the 2017 Draft -- Greene broke out last season with a 2.75 ERA and 169 strikeouts in 150 1/3 innings, while becoming a first-time All-Star and finishing eighth in NL Cy Young Award voting.

Greene has seemingly built on that success and ascended even higher this year, posting a 0.98 ERA with 31 strikeouts and four walks across his first four starts. He’s just the fifth starter since 1901 to strike out 30-plus batters, issue fewer than five walks and allow no more than three runs over their first four starts of a season.

“I haven’t been around him as long as everybody else has, but I’m watching him work and I think you’re seeing a young good player finding the next gear," Reds manager Terry Francona told MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon after Greene’s last start. “Watch him the day after he pitches, he gets after it. He’s learning. Good players, they learn.”

Greene’s new level of dominance actually extends back to the middle of last year. Since July 1, 2024, no starter with at least 80 innings has a lower ERA than Greene’s 1.00 mark. His 2.46 FIP since that point only trails Blake Snell, Paul Skenes, Chris Sale and Tarik Skubal.

Here’s what has sparked Greene’s latest step forward, which has the 25-year-old climbing into the conversation as one of the best pitchers in baseball as he gets ready to take the mound on Saturday in Baltimore.

His stuff is somehow even better

Greene’s stuff has always been electric.

Among the 150 starters who threw at least 1,000 four-seamers from 2022-24, nobody threw their fastball harder than Greene’s 98.2 mph offering. The right-hander complemented his upper-90s heater with a nasty slider that produced 206 strikeouts during that time, trailing only five pitchers.

Those two pitches -- which constitute 90.3 percent of his pitches this year -- have been even better.

2022-24 four-seamer: 98.2 mph // 26.0% whiff rate // .764 OPS against // 108 Stuff+
2025 four-seamer: 99.4 mph // 24.1% whiff rate // .534 OPS against // 120 Stuff+

2022-24 slider: 87.4 mph // 38.9% whiff rate // .598 OPS against // 130 Stuff+
2025 slider: 88.2 mph // 54.1% whiff rate // .000 OPS against // 142 Stuff+

Based on Stuff+ -- which looks at the physical characteristics of a pitch -- Greene’s 126 mark is tops among starters with at least 10 innings this season and a bump from his 119 figure from 2022-24, which only trailed Jacob deGrom in that time.

Greene has only used his splitter 8.2 percent of the time this year, but even that has proven to be an important addition he made to his arsenal last season. While the results are more good than great -- he has a 30.8 percent whiff rate and .600 OPS against on the pitch -- Greene’s splitter adds unpredictability to an arsenal that was basically four-seamer/slider before 2024.

The stuff models also love Greene’s splitter -- Stuff+ has his pitch at 115+, the fifth-highest mark among starting pitchers. If Greene can keep commanding the pitch like he has (99 Location+), his splitter could yield even better results moving forward.

“I definitely feel like I am at that point [of mixing pitches], which is awesome,” Greene told Sheldon. “It’s a good feeling just in the progression of becoming a pitcher, which is great. Especially at the big league level.”

We’re only dealing with four starts in 2025, so Greene’s stuff may regress a bit as the season marches on. If it doesn’t, though, Greene’s 31.3 percent strikeout rate (29.6 percent career rate) and 33.3 percent whiff rate (30.9 percent career rate) could stick for a full season.

Pounding the zone at will … with more fastballs

Greene’s stuff hasn’t just ticked up-- he’s also throwing boatloads of strikes and relying more on his 99-plus mph heater.

As Marquee Sports Network analyst and pitching guru Lance Brozdowski said in a recent version of his pitching notes, Greene’s approach has been “I bet I can throw fastballs by you,” and it’s working.

With the improved fastball velocity, Greene is throwing the pitch a career-high 60.8 percent of the time (he topped out at 55.2 percent last year), and most of those pitches are ending up in the middle of the zone. Greene’s pumping in fastballs 64.6 percent of the time on the first pitch, compared to just a 55.3 percent rate from 2022-24.

Being more aggressive with fastballs early in the count and not shying away from attacking hitters has led to career-best command numbers … by a wide margin.

2022-24: 9.3 BB% // 48.8 zone% // 63.6 1st-pitch strike% // 4.18 pitches-per-PA // 29.0 chase%
2025: 4.0 BB% // 59.2 zone% // 73.7 1st-pitch-strike% // 3.84 pitches-per-PA // 33.5 chase%

Few starters have shown such a drastic improvement in command in the early going. Among starters with at least 10 innings, Greene’s 9.5-percent increase in zone rate is the largest, while his 11.5-percent increase in first-pitch strike rate is third-best.

“Your stuff is good. Just throw it over the plate,” sounds simplistic, but it’s a philosophy the Rays have emphasized in recent years, to great success. Now Greene seems to be following that approach, trusting his plus stuff to do the work.

Greene’s future outlook

Now comes the fun part: How will hitters respond to Greene’s new aggressive approach?

If you know a fastball is coming two out of every three times on the first pitch, there’s incentive for hitters to attempt to counteract Greene’s aggressiveness. It’s easier said than done to try barreling a 99-plus mph heater, but Greene’s predictability on the first pitch could be something hitters expose.

If you look at other elite starters with top-shelf stuff and strong command, they tend to have a more diverse approach early in counts. Tigers ace Skubal has thrown four pitches at least 15 percent of the time on the first pitch since last season. It’s similar for Pirates phenom Skenes, who throws three pitches at least 18 percent of the time on the first offering.

Maybe Greene will make this adjustment before the hitters can respond. Perhaps it’s a moot point because Greene’s stuff is so darn good that it doesn’t matter if there’s some predictability in the first count.

Greene might already be aware of this, too, and is changing things up once he gets to two strikes. From 2022-24, Greene threw his slider 41.4 percent of the time in two-strike counts. That figure has dropped to 32.1 percent this year.

Using both his four-seamer and slider with two strikes has yielded huge results -- Greene has punched out 17 hitters with the four-seamer and 13 with the slider. He’s the only pitcher who has struck out at least 13 batters on multiple pitch types this season.

After flashing promise in his first few years but dealing with various ailments and inconsistencies, Greene is making his jump into the top tier of starting pitchers. If his newfound changes stick, Greene could be garnering Cy Young Award consideration for years to come.