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Unlike Riley Greene, Hunter Greene is an actual color. That color is not green, it’s red. Not just red for the Reds, which is the team he will eventually play for in the majors, but the red is also for fire, which is what he brings with his speed ball that can touch 103 MPH. Okay, before we do anything else, we need to see that:
Hunter Greene, Back-to-Back 103mph Fastballs. ?? pic.twitter.com/m9qd0JyOHd
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) August 6, 2021
*wipes drool from mouth* What were we saying? *falls off chair, sticks head up* Could you remind again what we were saying? *tumbles into a pile of leaves* Disembodied voice, “Could you remind me please?” Seriously, though: Yum. Hunter Greene doesn’t throw fastballs, he throws crapballs because that’s what the hitters say when they have to face him. It’s actually pretty amazing how easy that 103 MPH comes to him. He looks like he’s throwing with the effort of a guy darting in 92 MPH fastballs. Hunter Greene, which sounds like an option on a Ford Explorer interior, might be an actual robot. That arm action and the results are off the charts. And that’s after Tommy John surgery! Makes me think in fifty years everyone’s going to be throwing 125 MPH, except for Bartolo Colon Jr., who will be throwing a get-me-over 83. So, what can we expect from Hunter Greene for 2022 fantasy baseball?
Hunter Greene feels like the perfect complement to my Joe Ryan 2022 fantasy baseball outlook thingie-ma-whosies, because he’s the 180-polar-opposite. Ryan is the command first, unsexy, gets-the-job-done, workmanlike, cliché cliché cliché, and Greene is the high-heat, get-out-the-way-I’m-walking-guys-here, let’s-find-out-how-sexy-one-sex-machine-can-be specimen — a sexpecimen.
Okay, jokes aside, there’s literally no way I’ll be drafting Hunter Greene anywhere, outside of deep leagues, and, as I always say, if you have to ask if your league is deep, it’s not deep. I believe in a lot of ways shallow leagues are more challenging, so that’s not a slight. It’s more of a Cust kayin’. It’s nothing against Hunter Greene that I won’t be drafting him, and maybe it’s because he was just returning from Tommy John surgery, but his 10.9 K/9, 3.4 BB/9 in Triple-A last year is a no-go for me. Rookie pitchers bring inherent risk. I’m not going out of my way to acquire more risk. If that means I miss one of the biggest breakouts, then so be it. My guess is I won’t. My guess for what he will do: Get called up and put together a highlight reel of some of the flashiest strikeouts. Absolute beauts that will have people drooling, including myself. But also a bunch of 4-inning, 4 ER yucks. Oh, and I will be open to picking him up in-season, when he’s promoted, but drafting him? Nah.
Speaking of promotion dates, the Reds are still playing service time games with Nick Senzel, three years later. You think they’re promoting Greene in April? You sound green in matters of the Reds’ manipulation of MLB service time. Or I’m just an envious green color for an ounce of your naïveté. Greene will have to be added to the 40-man this offseason to protect him from the Rule 5 draft (or he’s been added already, I haven’t been following every knickity-knackety roster move). My guess is Greene will be up this year but I’d guess closer to June than April. For 2022, I’ll give Hunter Greene projections of 6-7/4.34/1.39/132 in 118 IP with a promotion date of June 12th, which as previously stated might be optimistic.
