'It's a special team': Tigers' Greene slugs two homers to beat Rays
Chris McCosky
St. Petersburg, Fla. — Riley Greene, for the first time in his young career, slugged a pair of home runs in a game and powered the Tigers to a 4-2 come-from-behind win over the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field Tuesday night. And yet, afterward, he mostly wanted to talk about what the team had accomplished.
Namely, for the first time since 2007, the Tigers (14-10) have started the season unbeaten in five straight road series.
"It's a special team, man," Greene said. "We've got a lot of guys in here who work super, super hard and it's just kind of paying off. We've got the team chemistry. We've got pitchers on the mound who are dealing for us and we got a bullpen that's really helping out.
"It's just a special team, a very special team."
Greene’s 426-foot solo home run to dead center field in the third inning was the extent of the Tigers’ offense until the eighth inning.
But down 2-1, Greene stepped in against lefty reliever Colin Poche. Catcher Carson Kelly singled to start the inning and Greene, who is the Major League leader in walks (21), was in ambush mode. He locked onto a first-pitch four-seam fastball (90 mph) and smoked it, 408 feet into the seats in right.
"He's going to hit more than he walks," manager AJ Hinch said. "But I love the zone discipline and getting a good pitch to hit and doing extreme damage. Those were really big swings, obviously. It's fun when he gets in the zone, makes them come into the zone and it pays off for him."
The Rays pitchers attacked Greene on Monday, challenging him and he went 1-for-5. And even though he drew a walk to start the game Tuesday, he expected the Rays to keep pounding strikes.
"Yeah, they were coming after me pretty good," Greene said. "They were throwing strikes, throwing good pitches. I took that and was like, 'Hey, they're going to come at you again.' Those pitchers over there have good stuff and they're going to use it.
"I just tried to stay aggressive and stick to my approach...I was just trying to do my job (in the eighth), trying to move Carson over and he threw me a pitch I could handle."
One batter later, Mark Canha, who homered on Monday, went down and launched a low breaking ball into the seats in left. Greene (6) and Canha (5) are your Tigers’ home run leaders. Their blasts countered a two-run homer by former Tiger Isaac Paredes off reliever Alex Faedo in the bottom of the sixth.
"We stayed in the game," Hinch said. "Our guys hung in there. It was a big blow when Paredes hit the homer, but good things can happen late in games, especially when Riley Greene is involved."
The Tigers, now 10-3 on the road, hadn't won a series in Tampa since 2016. It was also their fourth win after trailing in the seventh.
And, the game marked the return to form for veteran right-hander Kenta Maeda, who came in to his first-ever start at Tropicana Field with an ERA pushing 8.
"Kenta is incredible," Greene said. "He's done it for a long time and we knew he was going to go out there and deal. We have all the confidence in the world in him and we're going to back him up."
You knew things might be different for Maeda, though, when he walked out with high socks on for the first time this season. He was a man out to change his fortunes and he didn’t care what it took.
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"Just wanted to mix things up," said Maeda, through interpreter Daichi Sekizaki.
You also knew things were different when his second pitch of his outing was a sinker. He hadn’t thrown that pitch since last season. Not once had he used it with the Tigers. And for sure it was going to be a different night his first 12 pitches were strikes.
Maeda rebounded nicely from his worst outing of the season, where he was tagged for six runs (five earned) by the Rangers in 2.2 innings with a less-than-stellar 55% strike rate, blanking the Rays on three singles over five innings.
"As far as the sinker, I wanted to attack the inside part of the zone against right-handed hitters," Maeda said. "I've been relying on my slider, which usually tends to be on the away side. So just pound the zone with sinkers inside and that was successful."
The nine sinkers he threw helped open up his slider, which got six whiffs on 16 swings and the six balls in play had a meek average exit velocity of 81.5 mph.
"I discussed my mechanics with (pitching coach Chris) Fetter this week and cleaned up my mechanics," Maeda said. "That resulted in my fastballs having better command and velo. I hope I can build off that for next time."
He was in command, he was creative and he was impervious to three potentially costly errors made behind him. He had to essentially get five outs in the first inning after the first two hitters reached on an error by shortstop Javier Báez and a catcher’s interference on Kelly.
"Kenta's biggest and best inning was the first," Hinch said. "He'd done nothing wrong but get two outs and he's looking at first and second and nobody out. But he didn't conceded anything. He continued to make pitches...With the way that game had started, it could've gotten away from him.
"But no panic, no stress. Just continue to make pitches and trusting the defense was going to make the plays if he kept the ball in play."
But he not only got out of it — getting Randy Arozarena to ground into a double-play — he did so with just eight pitches, all strikes.
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"It wasn't like I gave up a hit," Maeda said. "So just focus on retiring the hitters I was facing."
Maeda brought all of his seven flavors with him — four-seam, sinker, slider, splitter, sweeper, cutter and curveball — and he mixed them brilliantly.
With a runner on third (who reached on an error by second baseman Colt Keith) and one out in the third, Maeda struck out Richie Palacios. He got behind in the count 2-0 with sweepers, then went sweeper (called strike), splitter (swinging strike), slider (swinging strike three).
He got Amed Rosario to pop out to second to end the inning, mixing in sinkers, four-seamers, sliders and splitters.
He won a 10-pitch fight with Paredes in the fourth inning. Paredes fouled off four straight 2-2 pitches. The first of those was maybe the worst pitch Maeda threw — a center-cut 90-mph four-seamer that somehow Paredes missed. After that, every pitch was away and finally Maeda got him to chase a slider well outside the zone.
He got ahead of 13 of the 20 batters he faced and had a strike percentage of 67%.
Maeda finished his night retiring Palacios again, this time with runners at first and second. He slapped his glove in triumph after he saw the ball pop up in the air.
"It was a tight ballgame and I really needed to retire him," Maeda said. "As soon as he made contact, it was just my instinct, my reaction -- I was out of that inning."
Faedo pitched a scoreless seventh and Alex Lange a scoreless eighth. Jason Foley pitched a clean ninth for his seventh save.
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