Fantasy Baseball Today - Hunter Greene Injury Update! 🚑 (3/4 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)
Episode Date: March 4, 2026Hunter Greene is dealing with an injury to his right elbow. He's going for an MRI and we're waiting to learn more. What do we do with him in Fantasy Baseball drafts right now? Subscribe to our YouT...ube channel: youtube.com/FantasyBaseballToday Download and Follow Fantasy Baseball Today on Spotify: https://sptfy.com/QiKv Follow our FBT team on Twitter: @FBTPod, @CPTowers @CBSScottWhite, @Roto_Frank Join our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/fantasybaseballtoday Sign up for the FBT Newsletter at https://www.cbssports.com/newsletters/fantasy-baseball-today/ For more fantasy baseball coverage from CBS Sports, visit https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/ To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Oh, we have a red alert up next on Fantasy Baseball Today Express.
Welcome in to FBT Express on Wednesday, March 4th.
I am Frank Stample joined by Chris Towers.
Apologies for my stupid little joke there up at the top.
It had been a little bit too quiet here, Chris, on the injury front lately.
But today we learned Red Starter Hunter Green is dealing with an elbow injury and will undergo in MRI.
Green claims that he has no UCL damage, but not so sure I believe that.
He said that he dealt with bone spurs down the stretch of last season, also had an injection.
Pretty crazy that we're just learning about this now again on Wednesday, March 4th.
But here we are.
It is a rapidly evolving situation.
But how far did you lower Hunter Green in your rankings?
How do we treat him in fantasy drafts right now?
Yeah, I dropped him to about 45 at starting pitcher, which comes out to about 150.
And I think that's a good spot for the...
currently known level of risk reward, I suppose, is the way to put it.
Because ultimately, I can't say we know very much right now about this injury.
Because there was quote from Hunter Green, or from Terry Francona that he's going to have an MRI.
I also saw some discussions that it was like he's going to get a second opinion.
So from Dr. Neil Alatrash, I who famously does a lot of the elbow surgeries.
Yeah, him and Dr. Keith Meister are kind of the two big, big elbow surgery guys now,
the two big orthoped surgeons for MLB.
And, you know, it's one of those situations where, based on what we know right now,
we know he has bone spurs.
He said no UCL damage.
Does that mean there's no damage?
Does that mean there's no flexor tendon damage or, I don't know, PCL damage or whatever?
I'm sure there's other tendons in there.
Like we just, we have no idea the extent of what we're looking at here.
What we know is Hunter Green said he had this injury late last season and pitched through it and then had some kind of injection.
Was that a PRP injection to promote healing?
Was it a cortisone injection to deal with pain and soreness?
We have no idea right now.
So we are very much.
in an information vacuum at this point.
And that makes it really hard to know how to react to this.
I don't want to, I mean, I say I don't want to overreact,
but I think you'd rather overreact.
You have to, you have to react accordingly to this.
I think, and given that this is a big name,
hard throwing pitcher, you certainly can't know.
not react to it. So I'm, like I said, moved him down to about 45 at SP. It's around 150. That puts
him, I think I put him one spot behind McKenzie Gore. And I do think that is a part of the rankings
at SP where you start to run out of sure things. And McKenzie Gore is not a sure thing. So that's
where I went, but I really don't have a good sense of it because it's entirely possible.
Hunter Green ends up not having surgery,
takes three or four weeks off,
is back in mid-April,
and pitches without issue for the rest of the season.
Because the thing we know is pretty much every pitcher
has something going on in their elbow,
if you look closely enough.
A lot of these guys have bone spurs
that they're able to pitch through.
Carlos Redan pitched through bone spurs all of last season
and then had surgery.
The problem is,
while there are some high-end good outcomes here,
there's also, you can look at Carlos Rodon,
who had surgery in October to clean up bone spurs
and loose bodies in his elbow,
and he probably won't be pitching in the majors until mid-April.
That's about six months.
Spencer Schwellenbach seems to be dealing with a similar injury,
and we're not sure if he's going to pitch this season.
You know, it looks like a minimum of three months
if you have the surgery.
But I can also look at Walker Bueller when he had his second Tommy John surgery.
I looked this up earlier today.
It started out with bone spurs.
And he had surgery to fix that.
He was also dealing with a flexor strain.
So it's not exactly the same.
But the bone spurs ended up leading basically to the Tommy John surgery.
So he just don't know how this is going to work out.
but there's a wide range of possible outcomes right now that that runs from he's on a similar timetable to Carlos Redan and is a dominant pitcher for most of the season.
And there are certainly plenty of outcomes where Hunter Green just doesn't pitch in the majors this season for one reason or another.
So even 150-ish might be too high because that's higher than I have like Garrett Cole and Carlos Rodan who are on like we said similar timetables here.
Yeah, so I lowered Hunter Green to SP 57.
That is 186th overall, and that is...
Could be right.
Just behind Carlos Rodon, because I figured Carlos Rodon is currently injured.
He's going to be back a lot sooner, we think, than Hunter Green.
He's not as talented as Hunter Green, but it felt like the right place to kind of speculate
and move Hunter Green to for now.
And we're really not going to learn anything, I don't think, until next week.
Because according to Charlie Goldsmith, who has been...
all over this situation, he covers the Reds.
He said the Reds are in wait and C mode until Tuesday to see what the plan is
going to be moving forward for Hunter Green.
So if you are currently drafting or drafting this weekend, again, you probably shouldn't
most people just like wait until the latest possible time to draft, like right up until
opening day if you can.
Something like 90% of drafts have not happened yet.
Yeah.
But on the off chance that you are drafting, I think you just have to be very, very cautious
with this situation.
Let's take a quick break when we return.
We'll talk about some possible replacements for the Reds right after this.
Welcome back in FBT Express.
Again, the big news that Hunter Green is dealing with a right elbow injury
and is going for an MRI.
He says he has no UCL damage, but we'll wait and see what we learned here.
And I do just want to apologize to all Reds fans and Fantasy Baseball fans
because I drafted Hunter Green just yesterday in the Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational in the third round.
This is all my fault.
This was the wrong pick the whole way.
I mean, it, if you asked me if you should take Hunter Green or Yardon Alvarez, I told you
to take Yard on Alvarez, who never gets hurt.
And it just, you know, I'm sorry.
It is just so deflating, Chris.
I don't even want to draft anymore.
It sucks when you're in the middle of a slow draft.
What is the point of even drafting anymore when you just lost your third round pick?
It's, oh, man, I feel awful about it.
I mean, hey, didn't, when you had Mike Maeger on, didn't he lose?
like multiple early or high dollar players and still won the overall
auction championship?
I think Yoron Alvarez was his highest price player last year.
Yeah, and I think he had a high price pitcher who got hurt.
You can survive.
Blake's now, yeah, Blake's now.
Is what I'm saying, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, his number one SP was Blake's now.
So you can survive this.
I hope so, man.
But it is, it's just so deflated.
You know, oh, man.
Every time Hunter Green's gotten brought up this offseason, I've just been
kind of like because I was higher on the consensus than the consensus on him last year
and this year it's just like every time we brought it up I didn't want to say anything but
it was always like I don't know if I love him as a top 10 SP yeah I was squeamish about it
but I think just last week or two weeks ago when we did our starting pitcher previews
I acknowledged that man I want to be in so badly but I'm just so nervous about the injury
history and then boom first time I draft him look what happens here
I do think this is good news for Chase Burns.
He probably was always going to be in the rotation anyway,
but this, I think, fortifies Chase Burns being in the rotation.
Who is next up?
It seems pretty clear to me, Chris, that Ret Louder,
their seventh overall pick back in, I believe, 2024.
23.
23 would make a lot of sense here.
What is your take on Ret Louder?
Any interest in him as a deep sleeper now, I guess?
Yeah, they have a couple of other guys,
Brandon Williamson and Chase Petty.
They've talked a lot about Williamson especially.
Chase Paddy was a first round pick in 2021.
He's only like 22 or 23 years old.
So I don't want to write those guys off entirely.
But Ret Louder made his major league debut back in 2024.
He was a top 10 pick about a year before that.
He barely pitched last year.
He had an elbow strain in spring training that.
Oh, another one.
Perfect.
Yeah.
And then what actually ended.
his season was actually an oblique injury that he suffered in May and he was just never able to get back from it.
And Louders, minor league numbers are not as good as you would hope for a guy who is pretty much a top 100 prospect across the board.
I think Fangrass had him at 101 or 102, but Baseball America has him like 75th, MLB.com.
He's in like the 80s.
So prospect people still like Rhett Louder.
Great command, good enough strikeout rate.
lots of ground balls. The comp that I was thinking, and this is a weird one because I was thinking
an Andrew Abbott comp, which is weird because Abbott's a lefty, louder's a righty. Abbott's a flyball pitcher,
an extreme flyball pitcher, louder, more of a ground ball pitcher. But that kind of outcome where it's
probably less than a strikeout per inning, but good whip, good control, and a useful ERA.
I think that's a reasonable hope for Ret Louder. He's not someone,
that I think has ace upside for fantasy, not someone that needs to be pushed way up draft boards.
But when you're talking about who are some of the comps that I made, like, you know, you look at
those bench round or final round picks that are guys like Noah Cameron and Ryan Nelson and Quinn
Priester, none of whom are bad, but are pretty low ceiling pitchers.
I think Ret Louder can fit in that.
Quinn Priester might actually be a great comp for Red Lauder.
what we got from Quinn Priester last year, could be what you could expect from Red Lauder.
So I think you put him in that conversation, bench flyer, someone who has a little bit of upside and now seemingly has a pretty clear runway for a role.
He's looked good this spring.
It's only two starts, but it's five innings, seven strikeouts, I think two walks, one run, run allowed.
The stuff ratings that I've seen for Ret Lauder and the spring training have been pretty good, you know, above average.
so he is someone worth getting mildly excited about.
He's not Hunter Green.
He's not Chase Burns.
So don't go into the season expecting anything like that from Ret Louder.
But he is certainly a name to know for the late rounds in even 12 team leagues, I think.
He's in that discussion.
Yeah, again, I think his minor league season in 2024 was actually really good.
364 ERA 115 whip.
He had 9.4K per 9 to walk.
per nine. He did that across three levels. It was only one start at AAA and then did get six
starts in at the majors towards the end of that season. He actually performed. There's a 11A.
He kept runs off the board, but he wasn't getting whiffs and all the underlying stuff didn't
really buy what Red Ladder was doing. But he's a good prospect. According to Fangraphs, it's a 60
grade slider, 50 fastball, 50 change up 50 commands. So that's a pretty good pitcher. So I do think he's in that
kind of bench upside flyery range of fantasy basketball, fantasy baseball.
I'd say basketball.
I got fantasy basketball playoffs going on right now, so I guess that's on the brain.
I did actually, I will say this.
I just moved red louder ahead of Roki Sasaki.
I don't think that's crazy.
Sasaki's more talented, but I just, I think that guy's a long way from being an impact major
leagher.
I would probably put louder in that kind of Mick Abel, you know, last pitch.
flyer, upside-type
pitcher range of fantasy baseball drafts
right now. Again, the big news, Hunter
Green, dealing with an elbow injury,
and we are just in wait-and-see mode right now.
So Chris has him around SP-45,
I have an SP-57,
approach with caution. For more extensive
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