Hunter Greene was a phenom from a young age. He threw a fastball 102 MPH and was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated when he was still in high school. Eventually, he was the second overall pick by the Reds in 2017 and thought to be a future star.
Then, arm trouble derailed his path to the majors. He finally debuted in 2022 and showed plenty of inconsistency and some more durability concerns along with tantalizing upside.
Everything came together this past season when he pitched his way to a 2.75 ERA as one of the most effective starters in the league.
Here, I’m going to talk about the adjustments he made on his way to breaking out, why they worked, and what to expect from him next season.
I’m writing these break out pieces every week. Check 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 with raw talent during his first two seasons as a big leaguer. That’s not the worst plan when your starting point is an upper 90s fastball and devastating slider. Yet, his approach became predictable with such a narrow arsenal and pitched to a disappointing 4.62 ERA across 46 career starts through 2023.
He did show a changeup about 5% of the time along with the fastball and slider, but it was ineffective and unreliable. He threw it just 227 times over his first two seasons and opposing hitters teed off on it for a .333 expected batting average, .501 expected slugging percentage, and .358 xwOBA.
That pitch was finally trashed before last season in favor of a new splitter and the impact was immediate. Just check out the difference in results between the two pitches.
Here’s the eye test on that splitter too, just to be safe.
The improvement is even more stark considering he exchanged the changeup for splitters nearly one for one. He used each far more often against left-handed batters because right-handed batters had their hands full with the fastball and slider. So the off-speed stuff is reserved for lefties.
Still, it’s cool to see how he threw the different pitches in practically the exact same situations year over year. Here are his pitch usages for his changeup.
Now here’s his splitter.
The only real difference is significantly more trust throwing that splitter in two-strike counts, which we can chalk that up to…