Emilio Pagán on his road back from his hamstring injury

NEW YORK — As he faced hitters for the first time since his hamstring popped at Wrigley Field, Emilio Pagán’s fastball was at 94-to-95 mph. It was only a live batting practice session against his Reds’ teammates at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, and it was only a precursor to a rehab assignment. But the velocity was there. He looked like Pagán.

“There’s a greater sense of appreciation and excitement that I can come back and help this team make a push to the playoffs,” Pagán said.

On May 4, Pagán’s hamstring popped as he went for a save against the Cubs. Lying face down on the ground in a stunned silent ballpark waiting for a cart to take him off the field, Pagán feared for the worst. He believed that his season was over.

He then learned that it was “just” a Grade 2 hamstring strain. It was as bad as any injury that Pagán has suffered in the big leagues, but it wasn’t bad enough to keep him from pitching again in 2026. He’s set to throw another live batting practice on Monday, and then he’d go on a rehab assignment with a return to the big leagues in the not too distant future (the fact that he wasn’t placed on the 60-day IL indicates that he should be activated in the next couple of weeks).

The last six weeks have tested Pagán. The injury has forced him to be patient.

“The hardest part with any soft tissue injury is you can only do so much,” Pagán said. “Once the muscle gets to a fatigued state, you can’t just keep doing more to heal faster. That part in the beginning was extremely frustrating. There were days I wanted to do more rehab to speed it up even more. You just can’t. It’s not smart. You’ll end up reinjuring it.”

He went from throwing from his knees to keep his arm fresh without moving his legs to running on an anti-gravity treadmill, to playing very light catch, to playing light catch off of the downward slope of the mound, to really ramping up his throwing and then most recently facing hitters at Yankee Stadium before Friday’s game in New York.

He feels strong right now. He feels athletic. He looks leaner. The best sign on Friday was his fastball velocity. His fastball velocity was 94-to-95 in a pregame live batting practice session, so he expects more when there’s in-game adrenaline and when he has more reps under his belt. Also, since high school, Pagán has a long track record of seeing his velocity climb over the course of the season.

The hope is that with the hamstring injury behind him, he will look like his 2025 self.

Pagán wasn’t quite Pagán for a lot of April. On April 14 on the final pitch of a save against the Giants, Pagán felt hamstring tightness. He got two days off and returned to game action over that weekend and earned a save against the Twins.

In his next outing, Pagán allowed the game-tying run in the ninth inning of a game that the Reds came back to win in the 10th inning. Following a better outing on April 25, Pagán nearly gave up a four-run lead in the ninth inning on April 30 but held on in the ninth inning.

The question then was how much Pagán’s hamstring tightness was impacting his results.

“I’m not one to make an excuse for the results,” Pagán said on Friday. “It’s fair to say I was pitching not at 100%. I’ve done that a lot in my career. It’s our duty as players to push the envelope as much as we can. If you’re physically able to be on the field competing, be on the field and compete. I felt even if I wasn’t at 100%, I could get the job done. For the most part, I did.”

Between April 14 and May 3, while Pagán may not have been 100%, the Reds won every game that he pitched. And the team was winning a ton, ending May with a 20-11 record.

Pagán’s 5.40 ERA at the end of May was bad, but he was filling an important role on a Reds’ team that was in first place.

“My individual numbers weren’t great, but we only lost one game I pitched in during that stretch,” Pagán said. “To me, that was ok. I don’t play this game for individual accolades. My job is to help the team win games. In that stretch, even if my individual numbers were suffering, we were winning games.”

On May 4, Pagán blew a save at Wrigley Field and allowed a walk-off homer. The next day, his hamstring popped on the first pitch that he threw.

“When it did finally cost us a game, the next day was when it popped,” Pagán said. “You went as long as you could, and now you can’t go anymore. I wouldn’t change my approach to it at all. Obviously, I’d love to not have the numbers that I have right now through my 15 games. At that point in time, we were winning games. That’s all that really mattered to me.”

Pagán has said multiple times that there’s a difference between being hurt and being injured.

“I’m not going to make an excuse for the hamstring being why I didn’t execute the best that I can,” Pagán said.

On May 5, he reached the point where he literally couldn’t pitch through it anymore. The official Grade 2 strain forced him to take a step back. It forced him to be patient. And after the initial fear that he’d be done for the season was taken off the table, he started attacking his rehab and working toward his return.

When he’s back, Pagán expects to be a big factor on a Reds’ team that he’s confident has a run in it.

“We know we’re a good team,” Pagán said. “We know what we’re capable of. We know we can go on a run and rattle off eight or 10 straight wins and put us in a spot where now people are talking about us as a favorite for the division again. This game has a lot of runs. We know we have one in us. Stay in it until we go on a run.”