CINCINNATI — Moments before he was wheeled into the operating room for his third elbow surgery two years ago, Cincinnati Reds reliever Tejay Antone had a simple belief about what was ahead.“Ninety-five is boring,” Antone said.After Antone’s second Tommy John surgery, he said he tried to become someone new — a pitcher who could prolong his career by easing off the accelerator. With a third year-plus rehab process ahead of him, Antone decided he would return to the big leagues the best way he knew how — through maximum effort.“I’m going to be throwing 100 this time,” he said.Antone isn’t throwing 100 mph this time. In his eighth-inning appearance in the Reds’ 3-2 victory over the Baltimore Orioles on Sunday, only one of his 17 pitches cracked 95 — the penultimate pitch he threw. It clocked in at 95.1 mph, and pinch hitter Samuel Basallo fouled it off. Antone followed that with his slowest pitch of the outing, an 80.8 mph curveball that Basallo waved at weakly to end the inning.“Ninety-five works,” Antone said afterward. “It’s not boring, but it works. … Punchies aren’t boring.”Antone struck out two of the three batters he faced Sunday. He did it with just one pitch faster than 95 mph — more than half (eight) were slower than 85 mph.Twenty-six appearances into his return from surgery, Antone is no longer just an inspirational story but a vital member of a Reds bullpen that has been searching for consistency all season.“When he first got here, we were trying to be pretty careful with him,” Reds manager Terry Francona said Sunday. “As he’s gotten here and gotten more comfortable, he’s been available a lot, which I think speaks volumes about him.”Given that Antone debuted in 2020 and emerged as the team’s most important bullpen arm the next season, it’s surprising that he’s already set a career high for appearances in a season — three more than he had in 2021. Antone is 9 1/3 innings short of his career-best 35 1/3 innings, set in 2020, when he made four starts.Antone’s journey has so many different chapters that he has literally written a book, “The Tommy John Protocol: How to Rebuild Your Arm, Your Mind and Your Faith.” The self-published work will be available via Amazon on July 17.The first time Antone had Tommy John surgery, he was a minor-league starter who came out of the operation vowing to throw 100 mph, using the hashtag #roadto100 on a post-surgery Instagram post.After transitioning to the bullpen in 2021, Antone hit 100 mph in a major-league game that May, mixing his fastball with a big, sweeping curveball that earned him the moniker “Captain Hook.”