Greene guts out six 'impressive' innings for Reds amid downpour

CHICAGO -- The conditions that Hunter Greene had to pitch in on Saturday night were not friendly.

Even after a three-hour, 20-minute rain delay, Greene stepped to the mound in the bottom of the first inning with rain still coming down. But the right-hander battled to give the Reds six needed innings in the team’s 7-5 loss against the Cubs at Wrigley Field.

“Obviously, tough conditions,” Greene said. “Unfortunately, you can’t just stop the game and walk off the mound. You have to be able to still go out there and get outs. So I tried to keep it close as long as I could.”

There wasn’t much going right for Greene to start the game. After the delay finally ended, the right-hander struggled with location and command in the first couple of innings of work.

In the second inning, Greene walked the bases loaded and then gave up a game-tying grand slam to outfielder Seiya Suzuki. Those struggles continued in the next frame, as he allowed the first three batters to reach base, hitting two of them with pitches before Nico Hoerner's RBI single.

But after Hoerner's hit gave the Cubs a 5-4 lead, Greene settled down. He induced a double play from the next better and got a flyout to end the inning. That was the start of him retiring 11 of the final 12 batters he faced before walking off the mound after the sixth inning.

“The way he finished that game was so impressive,” manager David Bell said. “Just great stuff. Early on, he had the inning where he lost command a little bit and Suzuki got him. [He] missed a spot. Other than that, he really pitched well the rest of the night, as good as stuff I have seen from Hunter. It's easy to do that when you get off to a great start, but when you have to kind of find it in the middle of your outing and then finish like that, just really impressive.”

Greene’s final line won’t tell the whole story of his outing, considering he allowed five runs on three hits with five walks and five strikeouts across six innings, along with two hit batters. However, he gave up just one walk with two strikeouts in his last three innings of work.

“I really came in the dugout and said, ‘You have a choice here. You can either fold and you can look up and it’s 10 runs, or you can go out there and compete. Go out there for the team and go make a statement,’” Greene said. “So that was a choice I decided to make and just go out there and compete and keep the team in it as much as I could.”

It was surely one of Greene’s stranger outings of the year. He looked all out of sorts early on, and there was no guarantee he would even make it out of the third inning after going through some traffic. Bell also had a reliever already warming up in the bullpen, so the right-hander surely had a short leash.

Greene’s ability to not only get out of that third-inning jam, but to get through six frames showed just how much the 24-year-old has developed on the mound in 2024.

“He continues to grow and continues to improve,” Bell said. “That's what it's all about. That's going to continue. He’s got a long way to go, but every step of the way, just an experience like tonight, he couldn't have handled it any better, in my opinion.”

Greene has been the Reds' best pitcher this season and has given the team plenty of strong outings, especially as of late. He delivered six innings of one-run ball against the Dodgers in his last start on May 25 and finished the month of May with a 2.40 ERA across five outings.

While Greene didn’t pitch his best in the loss, it’s moments like Saturday -- in which the right-hander had to pitch in rainy conditions -- that he believes will make him a better pitcher in the future.

“It builds character,” Greene said. “That’s the way you got to look at it, and it'll set me up for the future. When that time comes, I'll be able to go out there and have even better games.”