Greene's grind pays off with monster HR after 10-pitch battle

DETROIT -- This is why Riley Greene spent his offseason seeing tougher pitches in the cage, not just batting practice fastballs.

This is why the Tigers’ All-Star slugger spent Spring Training working on his plate discipline and not just swinging for the fences.

As he stood at the plate Saturday afternoon and fouled off pitch after pitch from appropriately named Marlins starter Janson Junk, he was keeping his third-inning at-bat alive, waiting for a pitch on which he could do damage.

“I never get off the fastball, ever,” Greene said. “Just sticking to my approach, staying on the heater. I know that I can adjust off the heater, just staying on it.”

The 10th pitch of the at-bat was it, a fastball over the middle of the plate. Greene crushed it into Comerica Park’s right-field seats for his first home run of the season, a three-run homer that put the Tigers firmly in command for a 6-1 win.

Though Greene entered Saturday with a .204 average, he’s the first Tiger to reach base safely in the team’s first 15 games of a season since Brandon Inge’s 24-game streak in 2009. A good amount of credit for that streak goes to walks, eight of them so far this season and six in games in which he went hitless.

Greene has cut his chase rate from 31.2 percent last season to 25 percent in 2026 entering Saturday. His overall whiff rate is down from 30.9 to 29.1 percent. His 62.5 percent swing rate on pitches in the strike zone is the lowest of his career, but it’s partly a product of him becoming more discerning on pitches he can hit for damage.

“I think I've been swinging at better pitches,” Greene said. “At least, I think I have. Even on the strikeouts, there have been a few where, yeah, it's been a three-pitch strikeout, but there's been a bunch where I've been battling deep into counts. Sometimes I strike out, sometimes I find barrels. It's paying off, just gotta keep it going.”

Greene saw all offspeed pitches in his first at-bat against Junk, whose 2-1 changeup ended up lined into right field for an RBI single as part of a two-run opening inning. A catcher’s interference call on Agustín Ramírez put Dillon Dingler on base and extended the third inning for Greene, who missed a first-pitch fastball in the zone and took a slider at the knees to fall into an 0-2 hole.

From there, Greene went into survival mode to extend the at-bat.

“I've got runners in scoring position, so the mindset definitely changes,” Greene said. “Not trying to hit a homer; trying to find a barrel.”

He didn’t offer at the slider in the dirt or the changeup well out of the zone, but he fouled off pitch after pitch to the right side, including a changeup, curveball and fastball on the seventh, eighth and ninth pitches of the battle.

“There were some that were good pitches,” Greene said. “Like, there was a changeup that went straight down, and I just had to foul it off. And then he threw a slider in the zone that didn't do much, and I missed it. And then I got a heater I could handle at the top, and I didn't miss it.”

Greene had fouled off a fastball over the plate on the fourth pitch. Junk’s 10th pitch went to virtually the same spot, and Greene was all over it.

“It was a 2-2 count. I didn't want to go 3-2 in that,” Junk said. “Felt like we had him in a good spot, and then I wanted to go up away. Just kind of leaked a little up, middle in, and he got me.”

It was the lone hit of the inning, but it was big. The Statcast-projected 408-foot drive scored Dingler and Kevin McGonigle, who had walked to lead off the inning.

“It was good to hit the first one,” said Greene, who had hit a couple of quality drives that didn’t clear the fences in chilly Minnesota early in the week. “It's not really a sigh of relief, but it's just like now we can kind of go. …

“That's kind of how it's supposed to be. You're supposed to hit homers when you're not trying to.”

Greene’s four-RBI performance was his first since Aug. 26, 2025, when he hit a grand slam against the A’s. He homered and stole a base in the same game for the first time since May 4, 2023. Saturday’s homer concluded the Tigers’ offense, but it was more than enough for starter Casey Mize (1-2), who fanned five batters over 5 2/3 innings of one-run ball for his first victory since Sept. 9, 2025.