Tigers Star Riley Greene Has Interesting Comment About His High Strikeout Total
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Entering this season, many people had circled Detroit Tigers rising star Riley Greene as someone who could play his way into AL MVP conversations based on what he had done the year prior.
Coming off a 24-homer, 74-RBI campaign across 137 games, it was easy to see why the lefty slugger was a popular name amongst breakout candidates. Not even in his prime just yet, the 24-year-old had already shown some immense promise.
While Greene is going to come up short in the MVP race, what he's done this season has lived up to the hype, with him recording 33 home runs and 107 RBIs entering play on Friday that has him among some of the franchise's best for single-season performances.
In fact, Greene is now just the fourth Tigers player ever to have 30-plus home runs and 100-plus RBIs at the age of 24 or younger, joining Hank Greenberg (1935), Rudy York (1937) and Jason Thompson (1977), according to Jason Beck of MLB.com. That is in conjunction with Greene becoming just the third left-handed hitter in franchise history to post 30 homers, 30 doubles and 100 RBIs, joining Bobby Higginson (2000) and Prince Fielder (2012).
All of that highlights just how great Greene has been this year, but there is one glaring weakness of his game that stands out: he leads the American League in strikeouts with 182.
Riley Greene Says His Strikeouts Aren't a Big Deal to Him
Today's era of baseball isn't played like past ones, where on-base percentage and an emphasis on slugging and producing extra-base hits is more valued than just putting the ball in play by owning a high batting average.
As a result, strikeout rates have gone through the roof, so seeing someone like Greene have as many K's as he does while putting together an incredible season is pretty much par for the course. Getting to the point where he can have these numbers while not striking out at a rate that has him in the fourth percentile should be the next evolution in his development. But he says he's not worried about how often he's striking out.
"Yeah, I have struck out more this year. I get it," he said, per Beck. "But I don't want to say, 'Do the strikeouts outweigh this?' It's part of the game, and I did it a lot this year, and I still have time to do it. But I don't think it's a big deal to me."
The Greene Goblin 💥 pic.twitter.com/WPuaZz1msm
— Detroit Tigers (@tigers) September 11, 2025
Greene is going to set the franchise record for strikeouts in a single season since he's already tied the all-time mark with roughly two-and-a-half weeks remaining.
Getting this type of performance from the rising star has helped Detroit become one of the best teams in baseball throughout the year as they look to secure their first AL Central title in over a decade. But it's also a dangerous game he's playing.
Slumps can come at any time, which is something he was not immune to at various points. And when not a lot of contact is being made -- he's in the 28th percentile for chase rate and the 11th percentile for whiff rate -- that makes it hard to break out of an extended period of struggling.
All of this is a balancing act Detroit and Greene have to have if his approach doesn't change. But that's something to figure out at a different time. Because right now, he's as dangerous as any outfielder in the sport, even with his high strikeout numbers.
