Reds to be without key starting pitcher into August

The Reds’ surge toward to the top of the NL Central has been one of the top storylines in Major League Baseball this month, and the fact that they’ve done so with negligible contribution from their starting rotation is a remarkable testament to the core group of position players in Cincinnati. 

Reds fans hoping for a swift return from right-hander Hunter Greene, placed on the injured list last week due to discomfort in his right hip, will have to hope others can pick up the slack on the starting staff for quite some time, however. General manager Nick Krall said Greene is headed to Arizona for a strengthening program and will need to follow that with a throwing program of four to six weeks in length, via Gordon Wittenmyer of the Cincinnati Enquirer. That makes a return sometime in August a best-case scenario.

Greene, 23, leads the Reds with 73 1/3 innings pitched and has been their most consistent starter throughout the 2023 season. He’s made strides over his 2022 rookie season, largely by scaling back the number of home runs he’s allowed from 1.72 HR/9 to 1.10. Greene’s 31.4% strikeout rate is right in line with last year’s excellent 30.9% mark, and while his 9.7% walk rate remains north of the league average, his strikeouts have helped him to offset that below-average command. Of the 82 pitchers in MLB this year with at least 70 innings, only three — Spencer Strider, Shohei Ohtani and Kevin Gausman — have a higher strikeout rate than Greene. Only five — Strider, Shane McClanahan, Luis Castillo, Pablo Lopez and Blake Snell — have posted higher swinging-strike rate’s than Greene’s 14.3%.

A prolonged absence from Greene isn’t what an already dismal Reds’ rotation needed. Even with Greene’s solid production leading the group, Cincinnati starters rank 28th in the majors with a 5.88 ERA, leading only the Rockies and A’s. The Reds’ rotation has MLB’s eighth-highest walk rate (8.8%) and has allowed home runs at the third-highest clip of any starting staff in the game (1.68 HR/9).

Greene and fellow sophomore starter and former top prospect Nick Lodolo, who’s dealing with a stress reaction in his tibia, will now be sidelined beyond the Aug. 1 trade deadline. That leaves Cincinnati with a patchwork rotation currently led by top prospect Andrew Abbott, who’s posted a pristine 1.21 ERA through his first five turns on a big league mound.

The rest of the group has struggled immensely. Righty Graham Ashcraft impressed early with a new cutter and improved movement on his slider, but he’s been torched for 47 runs in his past 33 innings. Veteran Luke Weaver has made 12 starts, allowing at least four runs in eight of them and at least three runs in 10 of them. He’s averaging five innings per appearance and sitting on a 6.86 ERA. Prospects Brandon Williamson (5.82 ERA in 38 2/3 innings) and Levi Stoudt (nine runs in seven innings) have both debuted this year despite shaky numbers in the upper minors. Neither has found much success yet, though Stoudt’s sample is obviously quite limited.

Depth options like journeyman Ben Lively and righty Connor Overton are both on the injured list as well, the latter after undergoing Tommy John surgery. The Reds signed former Cubs righty Alec Mills to a minor league deal last month, and he’s already been selected to the big league roster despite pitching just 11 minor league innings. The 31-year-old Mills pitched to a 5.66 ERA in 136 2/3 innings for Chicago in 2021-22.

Given the context of their current rotation, it’s hardly a surprise that Krall has already publicly acknowledged a desire to add pitching via the trade market. It’s similarly unsurprising, however, that Krall indicated that the asking prices on the nascent trade market are beyond the team’s comfort zone. 

“Right now the conversations are in places that we are not – where we don’t want to go,” Krall said.

Trades of major significance this time of year are rare, though certainly not unprecedented. But, with the expansion of the playoff field to a dozen teams, there are very few clubs that are decidedly out of the playoff picture. Several of the teams who fit that bill — A’s, Rockies, Royals — are in their current predicament in large part due to a lack of starting pitching. Today’s brand of MLB front office tends to wait until closer to deadlines — trade deadline, non-tender deadline, Rule 5 protection deadline — before making decisions, preferring to gather as much information as possible. Jumping the market this early would likely come at a steep cost — one that Krall and his group have thus far deemed prohibitive.