LAKELAND, Fla. -- Riley Greene called his hitting instructor, Jered Goodwin, one night after a game last season. Goodwin asked what was going on.
“I was like, 'I feel like I can hit everything for a home run,'” Greene said Saturday. “And it looked like it. I'm swinging at everything, trying to hit a homer.”
That conversation might best sum up Greene’s 2025 season. He’s the second Tiger ever to post at least 31 doubles, 36 homers and 111 RBIs in his age 24 season or younger, joining Hank Greenberg in his 1935 American League MVP season. He’s also just the second left-handed hitter for the Tigers in the past 50 years to hit 36 homers in a season, joining Darrell Evans. Greene also set a single-season franchise record with 201 strikeouts, obliterating Cecil Fielder’s mark of 182 in 1990.
The offensive production was critical for Detroit to earn a postseason berth and for Greene to earn a starting nod in the All-Star Game. The strikeouts were enough of a concern that they were brought up at the Tigers’ end-of-season press conference as part of a more general team need to hit for more consistent contact.
And there’s the conundrum: Just because Riley Greene feels like he can hit everything doesn’t mean he should swing at everything. But how do you give up some of those swings without giving up some home runs?
“I think it's hard with Riley,” manager A.J. Hinch said Saturday. “Of course everybody's circling the strikeouts and the swing-and-miss. I think he takes a lot of attention for the things that are imperfect, and I just don't want the good that he does to get overlooked. He's been an incredible offensive player, with room for improvement. You can psychologically really mess a guy up if you're not careful by obsessing over something that people don't like or something that is maybe imperfect in his game. We're choosing to continually nudge him for improvement in those areas, but I wouldn't overhaul anything if I'm coming off two pretty successful seasons.”
Ultimately, Greene didn’t overhaul. Mechanically, he barely tweaked anything. It’s the mentality that got an adjustment.
“We kind of worked on the mental side of things, picking and choosing your spots: Hey, if you have two strikes with a runner on second, maybe try not to hit a homer 5,000 feet,” Greene said. “It was just kind of mental stuff like that, kind of taking a step back, letting the game slow down and recognizing situations. Obviously there's points where you can take your shot and there's points where, 'Hey, let's maybe choke up, do some work in the box.'
In other words, don’t try to hit a home run when a single will do. Greene hit .294 with an .874 OPS with runners in scoring position in 2024, despite just five home runs. He doubled his homer total in RISP situations last year but hit just .244 with a .772 OPS.
“Obviously it showed last season that I was trying to hit a homer every single time,” Greene continued. “It happens. You feel so good and you feel you can do anything, but [you’ve] gotta kinda slow the game down and change it up a little bit.”
How do you get Greene to not swing at everything and try to hit a home run? For starters, give him pitches that he has no business swinging at.
“We made it a very competitive offseason,” Greene said. “Not as many ‘feel-good days’ as we like to call them, as in, 'Oh, we can just take some BP right down the middle and hit a bunch of homers and feel good about ourselves.' It was more like, 'Hey, we're going to crank the machine up. We're going to hit banging curveballs. We're going to change the height so I can take pitches.' Made it supercompetitive and was taking a lot more pitches off the machine and in BP so we can deal with the strikeouts.”
To further the point, Goodwin set up a competitive atmosphere with Greene’s hitting group back home in Oviedo, Fla., including longtime friends Vaughn Grissom and Ryan Mountcastle.
“Super, super fun offseason for me personally,” Greene said. “We had a bunch of my buddies at the gym making it competitive. It was a good time for me.”
It’s not just about posting better regular-season production. It’s about putting up better at-bats in the postseason and leading the Tigers to the next step.
“There's nothing like playing in the playoffs,” Greene said. “We all work our butts off. … I feel like we're in a different headspace. We all want to go back now that we've got a taste of it.”