Hunter Greene lands back on IL, season now in doubt

Cincinnati's season was already circling the drain, and now the one arm that made the Reds interesting is shut down again. Hunter Greene landed back on the 15-day IL with right elbow soreness, retroactive to Sunday, after feeling it during a side session. For a team clinging to any shred of relevance in the NL Central, losing its ace for a second time this year is close to a knockout blow.

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This isn't Greene's first trip to the IL this season, and that's what makes it sting so much worse. He had bone chips removed from that same elbow back in March and didn't make his 2026 debut until July 4. He got 5 starts in before shutting it down again, going 2-2 with a rough 6.83 ERA over 27.2 innings — numbers that tell you he probably wasn't right the whole time.

Greene had an MRI and then flew to Los Angeles to get a second opinion from Dr. Neal ElAttrache, the same surgeon who performed his original elbow procedure in March. That's not a good sign on its own — teams don't fly guys across the country for second opinions on minor soreness. Reds manager Terry Francona didn't sugarcoat it either, saying there's only a slim chance Greene pitches again this season.

The financial and roster stakes make this even messier. Greene is in the middle of a 6-year, $53 million extension he signed back in 2023, with a $21 million club option attached for 2029. He's now failed to complete more than 26 starts in any season since his 2022 debut, with recurring elbow and lower-body issues piling up year after year — a pattern that's starting to look less like bad luck and more like a real durability problem.

For a Reds team trying to figure out who's part of the next contending window, that's a brutal question to have to answer about your supposed ace. If Greene really is done for the year, Cincinnati is left leaning on a rotation that already looked thin without him, and fantasy managers everywhere are scrambling to fill the hole he leaves behind down the stretch.