The Cincinnati Reds and Hunter Greene got some bad news on Thursday when the former All-Star pitcher met with Dr. Neal ElAttrache in Los Angeles to get a second opinion on his elbow after feeling some pain while throwing a bullpen session earlier in the week. Greene, as first reported by Mark Sheldon of Reds.com, is going to be undergoing elbow surgery. Pat Brennan of the Cincinnati Enquirer reports that the surgery will be “around the ligament” and the “extent/specifics of the surgery won’t be known until the operation begins”.
The lack of more details may be good or it may be bad. Unfortunately we just do not know at this point. The fact that Brennan reports that the surgery will be “around” the ligament could be good as that may mean that it’s not Tommy John surgery, which would likely shelve Greene for all of 2026 and 2027. But there are a lot of other things that could be going on there that could still lead to a lot of time missed on the mound for the right-handed starter. We will have to wait and figure it out after the surgery when we get more details about what exactly it was that had to be done.
Greene has not had much success in terms of remaining healthy over the last 12 months. We learned this spring that late last season he had been feeling something in his elbow that was causing him some discomfort but he was able to pitch through it and stay on the mound through the playoffs. After the season he went and got some opinions on what was going on and was advised that he didn’t need surgery. After getting treatment he went about his offseason and his ramp up to spring training, but then shortly after spring training began his elbow started barking at him again and this time it was recommended he get bone spurs in there removed.
That procedure kept Greene off of the mound until early July. When he returned on the 4th he would go on to make five starts for Cincinnati before his bullpen session this past week that led to all of this.