Discipline is the basis for a major breakout for Riley Greene this season

Don’t look now, but Detroit Tigers outfielder Riley Greene is healthy and on the cusp of a major breakout in the early going. The 23-year-old outfielder seems to be regarded as almost an afterthought around the league, but there’s a good chance they haven’t seen anything yet.

As a 21-year-old, Greene held his own better than fellow top pick Spencer Torkelson. In 2023, he took another step forward, posting a 119 wRC+ that didn’t get much notice simply because he hasn’t been able to stay on the field.

In 2022 it was a broken foot. In 2023 it was a stress reaction in his leg after an awkward landing, and then UCL reconstruction surgery after a diving catch in August resulted in a freakish ligament tear that ended his season.

One starts to wonder whether an oft-injured young player is just snakebit, or if there is some underlying issue making them more prone to injuries. There’s no good answer to that one right now. Only time will tell, and while the Tigers have moved him off of center field and mixed in some days as a designated hitter early on to held keep him sharp and healthy, there’s nothing to do but see how it plays out and try not to worry about it in the meantime.

All that aside though, progress with the bat has been steady and the adjustments he’s making now have Riley Greene set up for a big season. He entered the year with a plan, and so far he’s executing it to perfection.

The plan?

Swing at more pitches he can drive and fewer he can’t, and hit the ball in the air a lot more often. He’s got the first part down in the early going. Now we wait to see if he can catch more balls out front and start cashing in on his massive raw power.

“Massive” raw power may sound like hyperbole, and it’s true that Greene isn’t Aaron Judge, Ronald Acuña Jr., or Shohei Ohtani. But Greene has hit balls harder than anything Spencer Torkelson or Kerry Carpenter has produced in the major leagues. Even Javier Báez, long a staple of the top 50 in the maximum exit velocity category, fell a mile per hour short of Greene’s best exit velocity of 114.4 mph in 2023.

So the question is, why does Greene have just 21 home runs in 936 plate appearances? Sure, his average and on-base marks have made him a well above average hitter and there’s been a good deal of extra base power, but Greene has 40 HR juice in that bat and so far hasn’t come close to tapping it. You can probably guess the answer.

Greene has a 52.2 percent ground ball rate as a major leaguer. That’s pretty atrocious for a hitter with power. He improved from 56 percent ground balls in 2022, to 48.9 percent in 2023, but despite the emphasis coming into this season, Greene is still close to 50 percent ground balls even after the two home runs against the Tampa Bay Rays on Tuesday night. That has to change, and Greene knows it.

For many players with less power, the answer has been a swing change. Nothing so radical is required here. It’s more about selecting better pitches that he can drive, and laying off everything else until he’s in a two-strike count.

This is the pitch chart for all of Greene’s fly balls as a major leaguer. Clearly, swinging at pitches in the zone is key, but you’ll note he can put the ball in the air from anywhere in the strike zone.

Now here’s the pitch chart for all 19 home runs coming into Tuesday’s nights game. You’ll notice a pattern here. When he crushes one out, it’s usually by getting something on the inner third, and ideally down in the zone, where he can open his hips and pull the ball in the air.

The rest are on pitches up or on the outer edge, where that same lower half flexibility and hitting aptitude allows him to stabilize himself even with everything extended to the outer edge of the strike zone and still drive those pitches the other way with enough power to get out. Where you don’t see that much home run power is on pitches in the middle of the zone.

Just looking at the home runs and were the pitches were located, you can pretty much see that mirrored in the spray chart locations of said home runs. Inner pitches get pulled out. Pitches away get sprayed the opposite way. And the handful in the middle up go to left center or right center field, with just two basically to dead center field.

This all points to Greene’s ability to cover the whole plate with authority and an approach well built for Comerica Park. If you can crush some pitches away, pull inside pitches into oblivion, and occasionally hit one out to center, there aren’t any safe zones for pitchers.

And yet, Greene has been a good major league hitter here at the beginning of his career, but still far from being a great one. The next step is cashing in on his power with more fly balls, and he can clearly handle the whole zone and still drive pitches up and sometimes out.

The problem is that too often he just hits the ball on the ground. That’s better than popping the ball up of course. Pop-ups and weak fly balls are the easiest, most certain outs in the game. Greene never pops up, and that explains why he’s been a much better hitter for average than Spencer Torkelson. Torkelson is dialed to hit more home runs, but as a result of trying to hit balls in the air more, as well as some issues with reverse pivoting his weight as he swings, and his own approach issues, he also makes a lot more sure outs than Greene does.

So the trick is to find the sweet spot here and hit for average AND more power. Not too many high average hitters pop the ball up or serve lazy 325 foot fly balls into the center of the field the way Torkelson does, but few of the top power hitters put over 50 percent of their balls in play on the ground the way Greene does either.

The key to Greene hitting for more power without sacrificing average doesn’t lie in looking for one hot zone and only swinging at those pitches. That’s kind of the three true outcomes masher approach that a limited hitter with power, such as Jake Rogers or the true master, Alex Avila, had to favor.

Riley Greene can be a lot more than that, but while it doesn’t mean he has to lock in on just one part of the zone or one pitch, it does mean he needs to be looking for something more specific early in counts and stay selective in what he swings at. With two strikes he can leverage his pure hitting ability to stay alive and still put the ball in play with authority, but early in counts he needs to be looking for something and be in position to drive it hard in the air.

Discipline is probably the key here, and Greene shows at least one specific sign that he’s working on it and seeing results. His O-Swing percentage over his first two seasons sits at 30 percent. Those are swings on pitches outside the zone. In 2024? So far he’s trimmed that mark to 25.5 percent. League average this season is 27.6 percent O-Swing.

That discipline is also showing up in a 20.6 walk rate and a superb .402 on-base percentage that has him on pace for a 7-8 fWAR season right now. His career marks entering the season were about 8.5 percent walk rate and a .335 OBP.

This is the way forward for Riley Greene. He’s still putting too many balls on the ground, but if he can just be a little more selective, he should get more of what he’s looking for in terms of pitch type and zone. In theory, that will allow him to catch more balls out front and in the air as a result, while taking plenty of walks rather than settling for just putting something in play.

Riley Greene is fine but he could be great

If Riley Greene does nothing different this year and simply stays healthy, the Tigers have a consistently good player here. The All-Star appearances may be few and far between, but with quality defense in left field and well above average offense, you’re looking at a 3-4 WAR player. That would be just fine, but there’s still plenty of potential here that hasn’t been fully tapped.

It’s easy to say, hit the ball in the air more.

The question is how to accomplish that without turning into a pop-up machine. For many hitters, that’s meant making major swing changes like J.D. Martinez’s adjustments to get the bat on plane early and moving up through the zone without any steepness creeping in. Martinez had the right approach. He needed the swing to cash in on it. For others, focusing their approach solely on pulling the ball in the air, a la Isaac Paredes since leaving the Tigers, has taken their offensive game to a new level in the power department even though it’s made him a bit more limited as a pure hitter.

Riley Greene doesn’t have to make those major changes. If he can just continue to be more selective in what he chooses to swing at, and anticipate pitchers a little more as he gains experience, there’s a star caliber player here who hits for average, posts OBP marks near .400, and hits 30+ home runs a year.

So far Greene is on the right track to unlock the next level. At 23 years of age, and with only a season and half worth of plate appearances between multiple injury interruptions, we’re just now seeing what he’s capable of, and it’s pretty exciting. Let’s hope he can stay on the field and continue to hold these improvements. A huge season is in the works if he can.