Arlington, Texas — It was just a single. A lousy base hit to right field leading off the seventh inning of a game the Tigers were already well on their way to winning.
But it was more than that. It was a real-time illustration of some of the points manager AJ Hinch has been preaching to the hitters all season long. Probably a good bet that at-bat was bookmarked to show in the next hitter’s meeting.
It was Wednesday against the Giants. Left-handed hitting rookie Riley Greene facing lefty reliever Alex Young. It was a six-pitch at-bat. The first five pitches were off-speed, four curveballs and a change-up. The first four were outside or low. The fifth pitch, on a 2-2 count, was a hanging curveball in the middle of the plate, that Greene was kicking himself for fouling off.
But Greene stayed with his approach. He still had to honor the fastball from Young, especially after he’d let him off the hook with that hanger. Honor the fastball, adjust to the breaking ball. That’s what Greene did. Pitch number six was another breaking ball on the outside edge.
Greene, with a swing reminiscent of Kirk Gibson’s one-legged, one-arm homer off Dennis Eckersley in the 1988 World Series, stayed on the pitch long enough to flick it over the shift and into right field.
“Adjustments are key, approach is key, mechanics — it’s all of the above,” Hinch said. “At the end of the day, we don’t care what the swing looks like or what it’s supposed to look like if you produce the results that you want. You don’t have to take a pretty swing every time to be productive here.
“You do have to have a game plan. You do have to have an approach that is consistent and you have to make adjustments at this level. Because they are going to continue to throw pitches to exploit your weaknesses.”
The Tigers this season, as has been well-documented, have struggled mightily against fastballs. Their minus-56.5 run value against fastballs, per Fangraphs, is second worst in baseball. Only the Angels (minus-59) are worse. The Dodgers do the most damage against fastballs, plus-80.3.
“If you chase, you’re going to get balls outside of the strike zone,” Hinch said. “If you are underneath, you’re going to get balls up. If you pound the ball on the ground, you are going to get a ton of balls below the zone.”
And if you can’t hit a fastball, you’re going to get a steady diet of them. Giants’ lefty Carlos Rodon on Tuesday night fired 56 fastballs in seven innings. The Tigers swung at 29 of them, whiffed on 17, took nine for called strikes and fouled off nine. Of the five they put in play, only one resulted in a hit.
“He was not going to throw a fastball below the belt,” Hinch said. “That’s because we have a hard time with fastballs up in the zone.”
Hitting has always been hard. But with all the available data and technology, and with teams more skilled than ever at distilling and deploying it, hitting at the big-league level may be harder than ever. Not just for the Tigers.
Entering play Friday, the median batting average in baseball was .243, the lowest since 1968, the year before the mound was lowered. In 2012, the median average in baseball was .255 with an average OPS of .724.
This year, the average OPS is .707.
“The way we can study data, the way we can study swing paths, the way we can break down every single entity of the game — it’s at an elite level,” Hinch said. “When you have a process that can exploit those weaknesses in the opponent, that’s what you are trying to do.
“We’re reacting when we hit and we are forcing action when we are on the mound. That’s why pitchers are ahead of hitters when it comes to preparation.”
And that’s just the one-on-one pitcher-hitter confrontation, not taking into account the defensive shifts that further complicate life for hitters.
“Across the board, when you play the good teams, the winning teams, the smart teams, those are the areas they never fail at,” Hinch said. “They are ultra-prepared. That’s why positioning matters, depths (outfield and infield) matters. There is so much that goes into preventing runs.
“In my career, this is the hardest time, as a whole, that this industry has had in combating that. That’s why the numbers are so low.”
And that’s why that at-bat by Greene was so impressive. He had a plan and he doggedly stayed with it. But more than that, he made an athletic, competitive adjustment in the box. If he took his usual A-swing, he strikes out. But with two strikes, he just went after the pitch. He didn’t sell out. He kept his weight back, used his superior hand-eye coordination and found a way to get the bat on the ball.
“As a hitter, you have to give yourself a puncher’s chance,” Hinch said.
This has been the crux of the Tigers’ message to rookie Spencer Torkelson, as he fights to get back to form at Triple-A Toledo.
Torkelson has been either unable or unwilling to alter his swing. He has a picture-perfect right-handed swing. But it’s an almost by-the-numbers, grooved swing. It’s not an athletic swing where he could comfortably make the same adjustment to a pitch that Greene did.
Once pitchers found the areas in the zone that his swing couldn’t reach, they exploited them.
So Torkelson is tasked with both adjusting his approach at the plate, to recognize and lay off the pitches he knows he can’t hit, and trying to take a more athletic, competitive approach into the batter’s box.
“You cannot cover every pitch in every count at this level, it’s too hard,” Hinch said. “The pitchers are good and the game-planning is elite and as hitters we’ve got to stay mentally strong enough to maintain our approach.”
The definition of a pretty swing is one that produces hits.
chris.mccosky@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @cmccosky