Ottoneu: What to do with Hunter Greene?

Earlier this week, on the Keep or Kut podcast, I discussed (among other things) how all Spring Training news is bad. The good news (Jac Caglianone hit a ball a million miles per hour! Shota Imanaga has added velocity!) is all interesting but we immediately get into small-sample-size, how-much-does-it-mean debates. But the bad news is a lot of injuries and suspensions and that stuff you can act on right away.

You can see this in the Ottoneu add/drop data. The players being added in the most leagues the last seven days are mostly guys who are new to MLB or struggled last year – Tatsuya Imai, Munetaka Murakami, Kazuma Okamoto, Mookie Betts, etc. The only player in the top 10 most added this week who can reasonably be attributed to spring news (the new kick change) is Kyle Harrison. The top 10 most dropped, however, are all spring news: Jurickson Profar, Pablo Lopez, Reese Olson, Anthony Santander, etc.

Way down on that list, but creeping up, is Hunter Greene.

Greene is an interesting case because he is a bit of a tweener in two ways:

1. When pitchers have Tommy John surgery or tear a rotator cuff or are otherwise doomed to miss the season, they become pretty easy cuts. You don’t want to sit on a pitcher, hoping for a clean recovery and effective return to the mound that is more than a year away. When pitchers are set to be back early in the season, they are pretty easy keeps. You don’t really expect 200 IP from most pitchers anyway, so if they are back by the end of May, you get a lot of value. But when a pitcher has an unclear timeline that should be July, but could be June and could be August, it’s hard to know what to do.
2. If your $50 ace gets hurt and is going to miss most of the season – especially if that pitcher wasn’t for sure worth $50 to start – he’s a pretty easy cut. You clear a ton of cap, you force someone else to pay up for the guy, and you weren’t likely keeping a $52 starter coming off injury in 2027. If your $5 high-upside arm gets hurt, you might be happy to stash them. Clearing $5 doesn’t help much and the option value on that guy for $7 in 2027 might be worth a lot. If a pitcher is closer to a fair value – probably a keeper next year, but not an obvious huge value – it’s murkier.

Greene is the perfect storm. He’s in that mid-range injury timeline, plus the surgery isn’t a major structural repair, so there shouldn’t be a ton of concern on his return. But he’s also a super-hard thrower and we know that can be risky for arm health. His median salary ($17-$18 depending on format) is definitely a good price, but not a huge bargain (he has been going for just under $25 in auctions this spring), and he is going to enter 2027 with a second-straight injury-impacted season and with only one career season over 150 IP (or over 126 IP, for that matter). Given how good his 2025 was, there is a good chance he comes into 2027 coming off a less impressive season with fewer innings, so his auction price will likely drop. And if it drops to closer to $20, those $18 Greenes you are sitting on today are basically fair market value, rather than a deal.

That leaves you, the manager unfortunate enough to roster Hunter Greene, with two not ideal choices:

• Hold him. You have him, he has proven he can be valuable in short seasons already, he should be back healthy in time to help you out, plus you can probably still hold him for 2027, even if the value isn’t elite. The upside is you have a possible 100-inning ace if he is back soon enough and a guy you can hold for the future. The downside is you are using up that $18 (or whatever his salary is) and getting nothing for it for a few months. You may also be using up a roster spot for a while. Greene will be a 60-day IL candidate, but the Reds don’t have an obvious non-roster invitee who will make the team, so it might be a while before they need to add a guy to the 40-man. Until they do that, Greene will be on the 15-day IL and will still use up a roster spot in Ottoneu.
• Cut him. You can clear $18 or so in cap space open up that roster spot without waiting for a 60-day move that may never happen, and he wasn’t helping you anyway. Maybe you force a bidding war among other managers and someone cuts something interesting you can use that cap space on. Or maybe you can use that cap space and roster spot on one of those “good news” Spring Training guys – yeah, their value is debatable but that might be a better gamble than Greene, and you’ll know if it worked out much sooner. Maybe he sits on the market for 30 days and you can try to buy him back? The downside is you lose Greene, you can’t bid on the newly less expensive Greene, and some other manager might land a $9 Hunter Greene. And that version of Greene becomes an easy keep with long-term value.

If you are looking for advice on which path to take, I think it depends on price. At $23+ (basically enough that his price next year will be higher than his auction price this year), I would cut him. Even at $20+, I can see the case for a cut. At $15 or less, I think he is an easy hold. In between is a tougher call. Another factor to consider beyond price: How many teams in your league could afford to claim him easily? If no one has any cap space, even an $8 minimum bid could create some interesting cuts from other teams. That makes a cut more appealing. If someone else can just pick him up without much roster impact, that’s less appealing.

But there is a third path.

I happened to have Greene in league one and decided to try something different. There are three teams in the league with $39 or more in cap space and at least one open roster spot. All three of those teams could have claimed Greene if I cut him, or waited for an auction and tried to win him at a lower price. There was no way he was going to sit for 30 days though, so if I cut Greene, I was just going to have to give him up and hope someone else didn’t get a great value.

I could have held Greene, but I need to replace him – I have 10 starters in that league, but a lot have question marks and at least one is likely in Triple-A to start the season. So I made a trade offer. Three actually.

I sent all three managers with $39+ in cap space the same trade offer: My $21 Greene, with no loan, for nothing in return. You eat his contract, he is yours. I included this note: