Greene's bat is doing some heavy lifting

This story was excerpted from Jason Beck’s Tigers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

Riley Greene plainly laid out the challenge in Spring Training.

“Trying to get the ball in the air is my goal. I’m [freaking] tired of hitting the ball on the ground,” Greene told reporters on March 10, as he searched for his first home run in Grapefruit League play.

If it sounds familiar, it was a similar goal Greene set the previous year. He made progress in his injury-shortened 2023 season, but he wanted more.

As Greene sits on the verge of an All-Star selection, that home run power is no longer a question. And as he has lifted the ball off the ground more often, his overall offensive potential has taken off.

With the Tigers visiting Cincinnati this weekend, Greene entered Friday alongside Reds shortstop Elly De La Cruz as the only Major Leaguers with at least 15 doubles, 15 home runs and five triples this season.

Greene took care of the last category on Wednesday in Minnesota with a line drive just out of Gold Glove center fielder Byron Buxton’s reach. Greene added a 427-foot home run to the right-field plaza at Target Field for good measure.

Two years ago, Greene ranked among the lowest average launch angles in baseball at just 2.8 degrees. His launch angle sweet spot rate, a Statcast metric that tracks the number of times he hit a ball with an optimal launch angle between eight and 32 degrees, was just 32 percent, putting him in the bottom third among MLB players.

Greene raised his average launch angle last year to 6.6 and his sweet spot percentage to 36.8, the latter a large enough bump to put him just outside the top quarter of MLB hitters. Still, he wasn’t satisfied, so Greene went to work with personal hitting instructor Jered Goodwin as well as Tigers hitting coaches on finding ways to lift the ball with more consistency without thinking too much about launch angle, committing it to muscle memory.

“We got together and came up with a routine that could help that,” Greene said, noting the first phase of the plan. “Brains coming together to figure out something to do.”

The second part, Greene said, was his approach at the plate.

“My big thing in the box is being in a strong hitting position at release,” he explained, “down in my legs, ready to launch right when [the pitcher] is releasing that ball. That’s going to help me get the air in the ball, because if you’re late, things rush and you hit the ball on the ground.”

That has paid off handsomely. Greene’s average launch angle of 11.3 degrees marks a 4.7 degree jump, the 18th-highest boost from last year to this season among MLB players. His sweet spot rate of 37.6 percent ranks him in the 78th percentile among MLB hitters.

The improvements have come even as some of Greene's raw power metrics have ticked down. His average exit velocity has dropped from 91.6 mph last year to 91.1 this season. His hard-hit rate has ticked from 47.3 to 47.1 percent.

Yet, Greene's barrel rate, the percentage of balls hit with the ideal combination of exit velocity and launch angle, rose from 11.3 last year to 13.1 this year, a jump that pushed him into the 87th percentile. The launch angle component is key.

It’s one thing to work the swing to lift balls better. It’s another to be more selective on which balls to try to lift.

“For me, it’s about the pitches he’s trying to hit,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “Not every ball is destined for the air. If you swing at balls down, offspeed down, sinkers down, balls in on your hands that you can’t get the barrel to, that produces ground balls.”

Greene said he has made no adjustments in his pitch selection. The same pitches he hit on the ground last year, he’s hitting in the air now. Still, the data suggests he’s becoming more selective, and it’s having a trickle-down effect. His swing rate at fastballs, breaking pitches and offspeed are all down from last year, according to Statcast.

Meanwhile, Greene is seeing a higher percentage of pitches in the zone on all groups.

From there, he’s taking advantage. Greene's .289 batting average on fastballs is virtually unchanged from last year, but his average launch angle (4 to 11 percent) and exit velocity (90.5 to 92.8) are both up. His launch angle is also up on breaking balls, though his exit velocity and batting average are down.

“I think early, he started to try to launch everything or get underneath everything, rather than focus on selection,” Hinch said.

Conscious or not, it’s working.