​I don’t usually lead game recaps with photos of the Cubs’ opponents, but this time the Reds’ Hunter Greene deserved the spotlight. He was the story, dominating the Cubs by allowing just three hits, fanning 12, and guiding Cincinnati to a 4-0 shutout in the opener of a three-game series. It marked the Reds’ first win over Chicago this year after the Cubs swept a four-game set at Wrigley Field in May. Seiya Suzuki collected two of Chicago’s three hits, including a second-inning double, while Ian Happ provided the Cubs’ sole other hit off Greene with a leadoff single in the fifth; Greene also issued Happ his only walk of the night. That was it for Cubs baserunners against him.
Shōta Imanaga pitched well for five innings, yielding a single run on a fifth-inning homer by Elly De La Cruz. Imanaga worked through plenty of long counts and was touched for seven hits total. It wasn’t a bad outing, but it’s hard to win when you don’t score. BCB’s JohnW53 noted several historical footnotes from Imanaga’s outing: it was the Cubs’ 207th start since 1901 that lasted exactly five innings with one run allowed; only seven of those 207 featured seven hits, with the six previously occurring on June 13 at San Francisco (the first five were by Wilbur Cooper in 1925, Joe Niekro in 1967, Randy Martz in 1982, Mike Harkey in 1990, and Jon Lester on April 2, 2017, at St. Louis). Imanaga tied Lester for the team’s most strikeouts in such a five-inning, one-run outing with seven. He also matched Lester by serving up a homer that produced the lone run against him, and he was the first to yield a homer in that specific scenario. Among the evening’s notes: four of his seven strikeouts came on swinging pitches off sliders or splitters well outside the strike zone.
A snapshot of those 12 strikeouts highlights the effectiveness of Greene’s deception: swinging strikeouts on pitches well off the edge in the zone’s periphery. In order, Michael Conforto in the second, Pete Crow-Armstrong in the sixth, Alex Bregman in the sixth, and Conforto again in the seventh, with several of those pitches barely visible on Gameday images due to their extreme location. Greene had the Cubs hitters completely fooled, a reminder of how tough he can be for Chicago. It wasn’t the first time the Cubs faced him; in his last outing against Chicago, on September 18, 2025 at GABP, he threw a complete-game shutout with just one hit allowed (Suzuki’s single) and nine strikeouts. For now, the Cubs won’t have to face Greene again until September.
Trent Thornton kept the game close by delivering a 1-2-3 seventh inning on seven pitches to maintain the 1-0 deficit. Then came the Cubs’ debut of Jake Woodford, a two-inning stint that ultimately did more to shield the high-leverage relievers than to swing the game in Chicago’s favor. Woodford greeted Ke’Bryan Hayes with a strikeout, but De La Cruz followed with a triple and scored on a sacrifice fly, widening the gap to 2-0. The next four hitters—an RBI single, a two-run homer, a single, and another single—piled on, and the game’s outcome felt virtually decided. Woodford exited after 43 pitches, and his name will likely surface again in Cubs coverage as they aim to optimize his role and maximize the bullpen’s effectiveness in the series.
In sum, Greene’s performance overshadowed the Cubs’ offense, or rather, exposed its limits: three hits, no runs. Imanaga fought valiantly, but Chicago could not muster enough offense to challenge Greene or steal the momentum. As the series progresses, the Cubs will hope for better luck against the Reds, especially against a pitcher who can render their bats virtually invisible with late-movement, off-zone stuff—and hope that the lineup can back their starter with more sustained production.