Scott Harris punches back at Riley Greene's dismissal of greatest weakness in 2025

RIley Greene was the Tigers' doubles (31), homers (36), and RBI (111) leader in 2025. He was the first Tigers player to reach the 35+ homer and 110+ RBI benchmark since Miguel Cabrera in 2013, and he's an above-average defensive left fielder. By most accounts it was a breakout season, and he's still only 25.

However, there's a major blemish on his report card for the season: 201 strikeouts. It's the most of any Tigers hitter ever, and he was the 17th MLB player to do it. He had a 29th percentile chase rate and 12th percentile whiff rate in the regular season.

In mid-September, right after he surpassed Cecil Fielder's 182 strikeouts in 1990 to set a new franchise record, he said, "To be honest, nobody cares about the strikeouts. If I'm not putting the ball in play, then maybe it's an issue, but I don't care. Obviously I want to work on it and get better at it, but it is what it is."

President of baseball operations Scott Harris sang a different tune during the Tigers' end-of-season press conference. He emphasized the need for contact. "We need to move the baseball more in the big leagues than we are," he said. "There are a lot of players on our team right now that have a lot of swing-and-miss in their games."

Sure sounds like Harris does care about the strikeouts.

Riley Greene tried to sweep his massive strikeout rate for Tigers under the rug, but Scott Harris didn't buy it

Greene isn't alone, but his is the biggest culprit. Of the 10 Tigers hitters who appeared in 100 or more games this year, nine had strikeout rates over 20% — the only exception being Gleyber Torres — and Greene led the pack at 30.7%. Only half of them had walk rates above 8%, and Greene sat at 7%.

What's more, he was at his worst in high-leverage. He hit .185 with a .637 OPS as opposed to .276/.842 in medium- and low-leverage. He hit .212/.621 in the postseason and, apart from his massive home run against the Mariners in ALDS Game 4, he only recorded one other RBI and struck out nine times.

Greene is, without a doubt, still a star in the making for the Tigers and could even turn into a franchise player further down the line, but he can't just dismiss the strikeouts and the lack of clutch hitting. Maybe Harris being so explicit about that will have Greene changing his tune going into 2026.