Detroit Tigers prospect Riley Greene played his first game Friday night since breaking his foot late in spring training. He went 0-for-3 for Low A-Lakeland. But never mind the numbers.
He is scheduled to play for Triple-A Toledo on Monday. How long he stays with the Mud Hens depends on his health and the strength of his plate appearances. Tigers manager A.J. Hinch didn’t want to talk about when Greene might be ready for Detroit.
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“We got 26 guys on this club trying to play,” Hinch said. “It’s important for the organization for the young players to play. It’s more important for us to focus up here and let him mend. When and if he’s ready to come, then great, just like any young prospect.”
With all due respect: No.
Greene is not “just like any young prospect.”
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For one thing, MLB Pipeline has him ranked as the No. 2 prospect in baseball. For another, it has been decades since the Tigers have had such a tantalizing young hitter in their system.
Unless you count Spencer Torkelson — and you should, though his Tigers debut in April felt less than whole without his buddy Greene.
They rose through the Tigers organization as a package. The next Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker. The repository for three decades of longing for homegrown, difference-makers at the plate.
It’s fine for Hinch to downplay Greene’s return. He’s trying to fix the team he has, and Greene is still a few weeks away — or longer. And while Hinch isn’t in the business of hope, his bosses are, and these Tigers are desperate for even a little of it.
You have to go back to Nick Castellanos’ debut in 2013 to find a player who generated such anticipation, though even his potential didn’t inspire like that of Greene and Torkelson.
Besides, back then the Tigers were less than a year removed from the World Series and aiming at another; they didn’t need the dose of potential provided by Castellanos. They needed production.
Castellanos was a good player in Detroit, but never a great one. He never made an All-Star squad as a Tiger; his best years came in Chicago and Cincinnati after the Tigers traded him away in 2019. Counting All-Stars isn’t a perfect measure of player development — every team gets an All-Star every season — but it can shine a light on teams’ ability to grow star hitters.
The most recent Tigers position player drafted by the franchise to make an All-Star game? It might surprise you: Alex Avila.
Avila, the Tigers’ fifth-round pick in 2008, had a breakout season in his third year with a .286/.370/.506 line in the first half of 2011. That was enough to earn him a spot in the game in Phoenix along with fellow hitters Jhonny Peralta and Miguel Cabrera. Yet even as solid as he was that year — he was even better in the second half, with a .306/.409/.507 line to push the Tigers to their first division title since 1987 — he was never entirely a feared menace.
Neither was Curtis Granderson, the Tigers’ 2002 third-rounder and an All-Star in 2009 (his final season with the Tigers). Like Avila, he was as valuable for his defense as he was for his bat. That All-Star season saw him hit 30 homers — while hitting just .249, limiting his star power.
Ditto Brandon Inge, also an All-Star in 2009 after his second-round drafting in 1998. And Robert Fick, who was drafted as a catcher in 1996’s fifth round, then made the All-Star game as a first baseman in 2002. (What is it with the Tigers drafting catchers who develop into one-year All-Stars, anyway?)
Back at first base, Tony Clark was the Tigers’ first-round pick in 1990 before getting his only All-Star nod in 2001. And as much as he teased with his power — four straight seasons with at least 27 homers in the waning days of Tiger Stadium — he wasn’t the bat the Tigers hoped for with the No. 2 overall pick.
But none of these players arrived in Detroit carrying the expectation Torkelson and Greene carry. Perhaps Castellanos, a high schooler taken late in 2010’s first round, comes closest to that.
Diving even farther back, we hit Travis Fryman, who made four out of five All-Star squads from 1992-96 after the Tigers picked him in 1987’s first round. At shortstop or third base, Fryman was often the steadiest player on a roster full of home-run-or-strikeout mashers.
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All of which is to say: If we’re looking back more than three decades for a position player drafted by the Tigers who represented the franchise in multiple All-Star games, we’re acknowledging how this franchise has struggled identifying, drafting and developing hitting talent.
The Tigers’ best runs have been built on pitching — mostly homegrown — and trading for gems from other rosters. Oh, and signing free agents.
There is nothing wrong with this approach, especially if a franchise doesn’t care what it spends. Sooner or later, though, the cost becomes prohibitive for everyone but, say, the Yankees, and a farm system has to produce difference-makers at the plate.
Why is that so hard? And is it harder than drafting and developing pitchers?
I asked Hinch before Friday’s rainout against Cleveland.
“I think they’re both hard,” he said.
But?
“It takes a little more time to get the at-bats for a hitter. The pitcher’s stuff usually plays a little faster than the hitter’s stuff,” he said.
It’s also hard to look at an 18-year-old and gauge what kind of player he will be at 25. Baseball is like hockey in that way. And while all team sports require deft talent projection and lots of luck, guessing how a teenager will handle a late-moving 95 mph fastball or a 90-mph slider is just that: A guess.
Not that the Tigers don’t deserve criticism for their long drought of homegrown hitting talent. They do. Other teams manage it.
Few teams manage it well, though. It’s also easier to identify talent on big-league teams’ rosters — as former Tigers general manager Dave Dombrowski did so well — than to identify future stars on college or high school teams.
It’s impossible to be perfect with projections, Hinch argued. Few would disagree with that.
“I think nowadays the hardest thing is the patience,” he said. “Or trying to create patience for your organization, for your fanbase, for your people. Like, let these kids play. We’re asking them to do something at a faster rate than ever before at the highest level. … We have a lot of experts in the industry that label people pretty quickly.”
It would be a mistake to label Torkelson after a slow start to his big-league career. When Greene makes his debut, he will need time, too.
If they both hit — and both hit it big — the Tigers finally will have cultivated the kind of talent they haven’t produced in years.
Does that create extra pressure?
Torkelson said he doesn’t worry about the outside noise or the history of the franchise’s struggle in this area.
“You separate it. I didn’t really let it get to me,” Torkelson said. “My struggles really have nothing to do with the media or anything. It’s all personal. And it’s only a matter of time.”
That’s the hope, certainly. Hope that will only ratchet up as Greene nears his Tigers debut.
In a season that looks lost before Memorial Day, the franchise could use some.
Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.