CINCINNATI — Hunter Greene didn’t hold back Thursday morning. He clearly has watched what the rest of Reds Country has watched all season. The Reds offense is full of potential yet maddeningly inconsistent and not reliable in clutch situations.
You can criticize the optics of a starting pitcher, team ace and leader calling out his offense for not coming through in the clutch. But he’s also not wrong.
The Reds have failed miserably over the course of the first two games against the Pirates to move runners over and more importantly, get them home from second or third with less than two outs.
We’ve heard all season how the Reds are not a “home run-hitting” team, and with 164 homers (ranked 16th in MLB) that’s not wrong. But when you’re situationally bad at the plate, that’s a deadly Daily Double. The Brewers – the team with the best record in MLB – also has 164 homers entering the final four games. But they’re also hitting .266 as a team to Cincinnati’s .244. The Guardians also have 164 homers but they have caught fire and caught the Tigers for first in the AL Central. The point is, you don’t have to be pounding the ball out of the park every night but you do have to do the little things if you’re not the Yankees, Mariners or Dodgers.
Take Tuesday night’s 4-2 loss. Trailing by two, they got the lead runner on in each of the last three innings. And in all three frames, the inning ended with double play, including Matt McLain grounding into a pair of twin-killings. The Reds strike no fear into any team at the plate. They don’t hit homers and they don’t string together hits and walks. That’s got to change next year.
Then McLain on Wednesday was on the front end of back-to-back strikeouts that killed a fifth inning rally that opened with a Tyler Stephenson double off the top of the wall in center. Will Benson did the right thing and moved him to third with one out on a grounder. But McLain and TJ Friedl struck out against Paul Skenes and the inning was over.
Greene had to bite his tongue in the dugout but didn’t on Thursday morning.
“I feel like there’s moments I was obviously frustrated (Wednesday) night, and moments where we got to be able to capitalize in certain situations that momentum was on our side, we’ve got to capitalize,” Greene said. “That’s where a lot of success happens in the game. I feel like there were opportunities for that. We haven’t been able to do that. So I feel like it’s kind of put us in a tough position here at the end, obviously, so optimistic, but I think if we were to handle some other situations that we had the momentum on our side we’d be in a different position.”
Hunter Greene Thursday morning after a night reflect on Wednesday outing and missed chances offensively: “I feel like there's moments I was obviously frustrated last night, and moments where we got to be able to capitalize in certain situations that momentum was on our side. Got… pic.twitter.com/eWqJ66HlpA
— Mike Petraglia (@Trags) September 25, 2025
Yes, Skenes is going to be the Cy Young winner. But in that situation, contact has to be made and the Reds looked overmatched. A bunt perhaps?
“If I scream at him, I don’t think it’s going to help,” Francona told me tongue-in-cheek. “I’ll give you an example. Like (Wednesday) with McLain. We got a runner on third one out right? He was the one guy. He was 2-for-3 off of him, and he had just hit the ball to the wall. So if you veer off and say you bunt, that’s exactly, to me, that would be really reaching because or going against because he’d actually swung the bat well off of him, right?”
In the ninth after Stephenson’s game-tying homer, Will Benson singled to right. He stayed right there when McLain struck out and Friedl bounced out to second. In the tenth, Noelvi Marte singled Friedl over to third and Gavin Lux scored him with a sac fly. Great. Spencer Steer struck out but Elly De La Cruz singled. Then pinch-hitter Miguel Andujar struck out to end the 10th. In the 11th, the Reds trailed 4-3 but had Noelvi Marte at the plate with the bases loaded, and a chance to tie/win it. With Yohan Ramirez about to walk in the tying run, Marte got a fastball right down the chute and grounded it to third for the game-ending force.
Whether or not the Reds make the postseason, two things are painfully clear: The Reds are going to have to invest in some offense this winter and learn to produce when situational hitting absolutely demands it. Except for one Elly De La Cruz swing on an elevated fastball from Johan Oviedo Tuesday and a couple of well-struck balls from Noelvi Marte and Tyler Stephenson, they have shot situational blanks against the Pirates with the season in the balance.
The Reds lost 4-2 Tuesday and 4-3 in 11 Wednesday because they couldn’t get a runner in from third base with less than two outs multiple times. The Reds are a miserable 3-12 in extra innings this season, and when you’re given a free runner at second to start an inning and can’t score, that’s a great example of situational failure. The Reds are ranked 20th in MLB with runners in scoring position, per Baseball Reference. All 10 beneath them are on the outside looking in at the playoffs.
Take the fifth inning Wednesday for example.
Stephenson nearly tied the game in the fifth with one swing of the bat, but his fly ball landed just below the yellow line atop the center field wall and fell to the ground for a leadoff double. Will Benson moved Stephenson to third with a ground out, but Skenes struck out Matt McLain and TJ Friedl to end the threat.
On Thursday, with Nick Lodolo spinning a gem against the Bucs, Ke’Bryan Hayes ended an 0-for-25 with a single to left to open the third. TJ Friedl worked a walk. Then Noelve Marte and Gavin Lux – the No. 2 and 3 hitters – failed to put the ball in play and struck out. Spencer Steer grounded out to third and another failure up on the board in a 0-0 game. That gave the Reds 342 strikeouts with runners in scoring position this year, sixth-most in MLB. Ironically, the top two on the list (Red Sox, Yankees) are headed to the playoffs. The Pirates, Cardinals and Orioles are not.
This isn’t a one-time deal. The Reds have been brutally inconsistent all season. It’s why they’re 3-12 in extra innings and why in the first 10 games they couldn’t score a single run in the 10th inning with a free runner on second. That’s wholly unacceptable for a team that considers itself postseason caliber.
“I’ll tell you what, we’ve had a we’ve had a bunch of meetings this week, and one of the things I asked one of our guys is, ‘Hey, when this is all said and done, I want to go back and look at all those games, just to see if there’s a common denominator or what,” Francona said.
Gavin Lux told Annie Sabo of FanDuel Sports Network after Sunday’s 1-0 win over the Cubs that the Reds are a “momentum” offense. Meaning, the Reds have to string hits or productive on-base at-bats together to be effective. He then added this week that the Reds are still maturing as a situational hitting offense.
“I think that’s fair,” Francona said. “We haven’t been very good at lately, which gets exacerbated when you’re not hitting the ball. If you’re getting 20 hits a game, and you’re just okay situationally, you’re probably still going to score some runs. But when you really have to have it and you don’t, it becomes a little more glaring.”
