NEW YORK — Three weeks from Friday will mark the 35th anniversary of Cecil Fielder hitting his 50th home run against the Yankees on Oct. 3 of the 1990 season. It seems like a mundane milestone now, but until Fielder, nobody had broken the 50-homer threshold since George Foster in 1977.
Fielder hit his 50th home run on the final day of the regular season at Yankee Stadium, taking rookie Steve Adkins deep. For good measure, Fielder hit another in his final at-bat off Alan Mills. In between those historic homers, he had another bit of history: He struck out for the 182nd time that season, taking a called third strike from Rich Monteleone.
Fielder already had the Tigers’ single-season strikeout record, having passed Jake Wood’s 141 strikeouts from 1961 in mid-August. It ended up being by far the highest total of Fielder’s career, but such was the price for chasing home runs.
No Tiger has come close to a 50-homer season since Fielder; Miguel Cabrera is the only Detroit slugger to even reach 40. But when Riley Greene struck out in the fifth inning against Yankees starter Cam Schlittler in Thursday’s 9-3 loss, he tied Fielder’s strikeout record.
“Exactly,” Greene said with a laugh when he asked whose record he was approaching. “I don’t want to hear about it. Just put that name next to mine.”
Like Fielder in 1990, Greene’s strikeouts come amidst a career season. He’s the third left-handed hitter in the Tigers’ 125-year franchise history to post 30 homers, 30 doubles and 100 RBIs, joining Bobby Higginson (2000) and Fielder’s son, Prince (2012). Greene is the fourth Tiger to post 30 homers and 100 RBIs in his age-24 season or younger, joining Jason Thompson (1977), Rudy York (1937) and Hank Greenberg (1935). He has an outside chance at joining Cabrera as the Tigers’ only 40-homer sluggers since Cecil.
Part of Greene’s breakout comes from swinging more than ever. He entered Thursday with the largest jump in swing percentage from last year (44.3) to this season (52.1) among Major League hitters, just ahead of Arizona’s Corbin Carroll. His similar jump in out-of-zone swing rate (23.1 percent in 2024, 30.9 this year) was just behind Milwaukee’s Joey Ortiz. But Greene’s 4.5 percent increase in whiff rate isn’t even in the top 10, and his 31.3 percent whiff rate entering Thursday was just outside the top 10 percent for largest.
“I’m getting my swing off,” Greene said. “There was a stretch where I got my swing off and I struck out a bunch. There’s a stretch where I’m not striking out, but I haven’t hit as many homers. I don’t know if those go hand in hand; maybe they do, maybe they don’t. But it is what it is. You’re going to do it in baseball.”
Greene’s swing-and-miss rate has dropped over the past two months from its peak in July. He entered Thursday with a 26.3 percent whiff rate, his lowest of the season after four consecutive months over 30 percent. His strikeout rate is actually up this month at 32.4 percent, compared to 23.2 percent in August, but well off his 40.4 percent K rate in July.
The improvement wasn’t so much a conscious effort to reduce strikeouts, but something that came about from a different development.
“I think it was just a byproduct of really locking in on my approach,” Greene said. “As the at-bat went on, I would kind of lose focus on what I want to do. And it happens, you get caught up in the moment. And I was really focusing on sticking to my approach, sticking to where I do damage most and not going away from it.”
He still lapses, such as his strikeout in his first at-bat Tuesday on a Will Warren 3-2 changeup in the dirt. But he also has at-bats like his final time up Wednesday, when he fought his way out of an 0-2 count against Luke Weaver for a 10-pitch battle featuring five foul balls before lifting a sacrifice fly to right.
“I don’t care what I do,” Greene said. “I just want to score the run. I choke up on the bat and put the ball in play, because they’re playing in. So I’m trying my best to put the ball in the air.”
If sticking with a plan results in more strikeouts, he can live with it.
“Yeah, I have struck out more this year. I get it,” he said. “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. Is there a record for most ground balls hit to first base?”
