Hunter Greene needs second elbow surgery, Reds season sunk

MLB Trade Rumors broke the news Friday: Hunter Greene is going under the knife again on his right elbow, and this one's not a quick fix. The Reds' hardest thrower just got hit with the injury nobody in Cincinnati wanted to see twice in one calendar year.

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Hunter Greene To Undergo Elbow Surgery t.co/WXfuxhNRZ5

The brutal part is the timing. Greene already had arthroscopic surgery back on March 11 to clean out bone chips in that same elbow. Less than 5 months later, he's back under the knife — this time for something far more serious. Reports out of Cincinnati say Greene flew to Los Angeles for a second opinion from Dr. Neal ElAttrache after feeling soreness during a bullpen session, and the diagnosis came back as a partially torn UCL.

That's the injury every pitcher dreads, and it's not Greene's first rodeo with it. He underwent his first Tommy John surgery all the way back in 2018, before he'd even thrown a pitch in the big leagues. Now, at 26, he's staring down a second one — and with UCL rehabs running closer to 14 months these days, this isn't just a lost 2026, it's likely a chunk of 2027 gone too.

On the field, this was already a rough year for Greene, who was sitting at 2-2 with a 6.83 ERA and had already logged real time on the injured list before this latest setback. For a Reds team that leaned on his stuff to anchor the rotation, losing their top arm for what could be a year and a half is a gut punch to any stretch-run plans and a serious dent in his long-term outlook as one of the game's premier fastball arms.

The bigger question now is what this means for Greene's future in Cincinnati and in the league. Two UCL procedures before age 27 is a scary pattern for any power pitcher, and the Reds will have to figure out how to build a rotation around a guy who might not throw a competitive pitch again until sometime in 2027.