Greene learning from missteps
There are days when nothing works. The rain messes with the baseballs, the rosin bag is wet, the downpour delays you 59 minutes, your slider doesn’t slide, you give up three home runs and a couple of warning-track bombs. You look like a guy about five minutes from a high school game.
That was Cincinnati Reds pitcher Hunter Greene on Thursday. We came to the game hoping to see an encore of an encore. A third consecutive gem from the crown jewel of the Reds farm system. What we got was a reminder that Greene is 22 years old.
“I was reaching a little bit,’’ Greene said. “My slider wasn’t sharp. (I was) just trying to find anything to get the ball dry. This was the first time I had to throw through something like that.’’
Days like Thursday will make Greene the pitcher he can be. Not the glittery nights when the weather is clean and the slider does as it’s told. Those are the easy nights for someone with Greene’s talent. No, Thursday will help him more.
In five innings, Greene gave up three homers, including back-to-back screamers in the fifth. Greene left after that, up 10-5. The Reds would pull away even further, 20-5. Greene got the win. This start will help make up for all the other starts in his career that he’ll lose 1-0. Smart people learn more from their failures than from their triumphs. Greene is 22 going on wise.
“To be at a point where he’s excellent at handling situations, (it’s) almost too good to be true sometimes,’’ David Bell said. “He has a deep understanding. He learns from everything that happens to him.’’
Bell said Greene’s two previous starts, both beyond reproach, had their roots in a May 5 assignment in Milwaukee, when the Brewers bashed him for five homers. Instead of flinching, Greene kept punching. “He was getting hit hard. He didn’t back away,’’ Bell said.
The Milwaukee numbers: two-plus innings, nine hits, eight runs.
His next two starts: 13-plus innings, four hits, two runs.
When you’re 22 and own all of 44 major-league innings, what matters is what you learn after you think you’ve got things figured out. “It’s all part of the process. He’s right on track, just handling everything beautifully,’’ Bell said.
Greene learned Thursday to trust his fastball when his slider isn’t working. The fact that he owns a triple-digit fastball and has to be told to use it more, not less, is in itself a grown-up approach.
Hunter Greene will carry on, smarter today than the day before. He called his outing “more of a reach’’ than normal. “Recognizing that, and still having to go out there and do well, help the team,’’ he said. It’s all part of the process.