HOUSTON -- Riley Greene can be his toughest critic as a hitter, which is why his reaction to his double and three-run home run Saturday night against the Orioles sounded more like somebody still trying to dig out of a slump than somebody who had found the light.
“Homers are going to come. I’m just trying to put better at-bats together for the team,” Greene said then. “And they’ve been really bad on my part, the at-bats. … We need to definitely be better on the at-bats.”
Two days and a two-homer game later, yeah, we’re thinking he’s back. It was arguably the silver lining of the Tigers’ 8-5 loss to the Astros on Monday night at Daikin Park.
The home runs were opposite-field lofts to the Crawford Boxes in left field, not pull drives into the right-field seats. But as Greene raised his arm rounding the bases and pointed to the bullpen in left-center field, he wasn’t apologizing.
Between the home runs and two well-struck line drives to right, Greene had four solid bits of contact. He still had four swings and misses, all on fastballs or changeups from Astros starter Ronel Blanco, but this was arguably his best collection of at-bats in a game since his opening-week tear.
“It’s good,” he said. “... Trying to start early, get in a good position to do some damage.”
Though Greene was coming off an 0-for-4, two-strikeout Sunday against the Orioles at Comerica Park, the stage was set for him to break out here. He has always hit well at Daikin Park (formerly Minute Maid Park). He’s 13-for-29 in his regular-season career here with five home runs, a triple and 10 RBIs in seven games. The only other place where he has more than two home runs is Comerica Park.
Four of Greene’s five homers here have gone to left or left-center field; he has just nine such opposite-field homers anywhere else, according to Baseball-Reference.com.
“I’m going to be honest, I don’t know what it is,” Greene said. “I have no idea what it is. Maybe a good backdrop, maybe, but no idea. Maybe it’s a short porch for my approach.”
Greene looks to hit balls to left-center when he’s right, so the ballpark plays close to his general hitting approach. But both homers were fading away from where he would normally look to hit. That worked in his favor
Greene’s fourth-inning solo drive off Blanco seemed headed for the cutout area in left-center, where the dimensions suddenly deepen. Left fielder Jose Altuve spun around on the ball as it carried, but was seemingly camped under it before it carried just into the Crawford Boxes. While Altuve looked up in disgust, Greene rounded the bases, having extended Detroit’s lead to 3-0.
Four innings later, Greene connected with a fastball at the bottom of the zone from Astros reliever and Grand Rapids, Mich., native Kaleb Ort and took off running. He lost track of the ball.
“The second one, I had no idea where it went,” Greene said, “because I was head-down. I hit it and I looked up and I was like, ‘Where is it?’ And then I saw it going out to left. I knew I hit it good; I just didn’t know if I hit it high enough.”
Five of Greene’s six home runs this season have come off of fastballs. Yet he entered Monday with an average exit velocity of 85.5 mph off of heaters, seven ticks off his average from last year. His overall average exit velocity is also down, dropping him from the 84th percentile among MLB players last year to the 44th percentile this season entering Monday.
Statcast’s bat tracking feature showed a drop in his average bat speed entering Monday, as well as a drop in his fast-swing rate (his percentage of swings over 75 mph) and his rate of “squared-up” swings. That could be a reflection of timing, and why he wants to get his swing started sooner.
“We’re pretty early in the season, and I know we micro-analyze everything,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “I think Riley’s going to be fine. I think tonight’s a good example of that. He had some hard luck in the Baltimore series, but you started to see him hit the ball pretty hard, over 100 mph quite a bit. And he got some to go out of the ballpark tonight.
“He’s a big reason why we have a lot of belief in this team.”