As the calendar turns toward the end of 2025, this is the stretch of the year built for reflection. For some, it’s personal, taking stock of goals met or missed before another year begins. For others, it’s tied to sports heartbreak, like Detroit Lions fans still reeling from the Christmas Day loss to the Minnesota Vikings that officially shut the door on a postseason run.

For Detroit Tigers fans, however, there is one development from the 2025 season that deserves more than a passing glance as 2026 approaches. For the first time in nearly a decade, the Tigers had two hitters reach the 30-home-run mark: Riley Greene and Spencer Torkelson.

That may sound like a simple counting stat, but context matters. Detroit hadn’t seen a pair of 30-homer bats in the same season since 2016, when Miguel Cabrera and Justin Upton carried the middle of the order. In the years since, the organization cycled through rebuilds, false starts, and lineups that struggled to generate consistent power, particularly from homegrown players. In fact, that was the first time since the MLB Draft began in 1965 that the Tigers had two drafted players hit 30 or more home runs.  

Greene and Torkelson reaching that threshold together wasn’t just a milestone. It was a signal. And as Detroit looks toward 2026, the how behind those home run totals — the underlying data, batted-ball profiles, and sustainability,  may be just as important as the number itself

Early in the 2025 season, Pitcher List highlighted Spencer Torkelson’s impressive adjustments and emergence as a power threat in their piece “Spencer Torkelson Is Lifting Off.” Their early-season observations helped spotlight trends that this deeper data review will explore and expand upon. Credit to Pitcher List for the initial call on Torkelson’s breakout trajectory.

For Spencer Torkelson, the jump to 30-plus home runs in 2025 was less about raw strength and more about refined damage particularly against fastballs.

The most obvious shift in Torkelson’s profile from 2024 to 2025 is how decisively he punished velocity.

Against four-seam fastballs in 2025:

In 2024, fastballs were closer to neutral for Torkelson. In 2025, they became a weapon. Pitchers who challenged him early or tried to sneak velocity past him paid for it, particularly when the ball leaked middle-in. His bat speed held firm, but the difference was consistency of launch, fewer rolled-over fastballs, more lifted contact to his pull side.

This aligns with his Statcast percentile jumps:

The sweet-spot number is especially telling. Torkelson wasn’t just hitting the ball hard — he was hitting it on the right plane more often.

One of the quieter improvements was that the power surge didn’t come with reckless swing behavior.

From 2024 to 2025:

He still whiffed — that’s part of his profile — but the whiffs increasingly came on secondary pitches outside the zone rather than fastballs he should damage. That matters for sustainability.

Another positive signal for 2026 is that Torkelson no longer looked like a platoon liability.

In 2025:

The power played from both sides, and pitchers couldn’t simply neutralize him by flipping the handedness. That matters when projecting middle-of-the-order run production over a full season.

There’s also no evidence that this was a hot-half mirage.

Post–All-Star break:

Not elite, but stable. Combined with his rolling xwOBA climbing late in the season, it supports the idea that his approach — not just timing — improved.

Torkelson still struggles against certain breaking pitches:

But here’s the key: pitchers can’t lean on those pitches if they’re falling behind in counts. By reasserting fastball dominance, Torkelson forced pitchers to adjust to him again, the exact opposite of 2024. Are the strikeouts high, yes, similar to Riley Greene but he was one of just four first basemen to hit 30 home runs in all of baseball. 

When paired with a left-handed force like Riley Greene, it changes lineup geometry. Pitchers lose the ability to pitch around one without consequences, and Detroit’s offense finally has a repeatable power base entering 2026.

While a late playoff run helped soften the edges of the season, it did not erase the issues that surfaced as the year wore on. Detroit’s offense stalled after the All-Star break, a fade that coincided with rising strikeout totals and declining consistency at the plate — a concern highlighted recently by Sports Illustrated.

At the center of that discussion was Riley Greene, who finished the season leading the American League with 201 strikeouts. Greene’s power output, 36 home runs and 111 RBIs,  made the number easier to overlook on the surface, but it became a focal point during the organization’s end-of-season evaluation.

President of baseball operations Scott Harris did not shy away from the issue during his postseason press conference, emphasizing that contact quality and strikeout reduction remain priorities moving forward.

“We need to make more contact as an organization,” Harris said. “This has been a theme for the last two years. In the months where our strikeout rate was lowest, our offense was at its best.”

Harris specifically pointed to June — Detroit’s lowest strikeout month — as its most productive stretch offensively, reinforcing the front office’s belief that strikeouts are not an abstract concern, even for power hitters.

Greene, for his part, offered a different perspective earlier in the season, telling 97.1 The Ticket that “nobody cares” about the strikeouts as long as the production remains. The contrast in viewpoints created an understandable tension between results and process,  one that makes Greene’s Statcast profile especially important to examine.

Because when you move past the raw strikeout total and into the underlying data, a picture forms,  one that suggests Greene’s power surge was real, repeatable, and still capable of refinement heading into 2026.

Greene’s underlying contact quality was among the best in baseball:

These are not borderline power numbers — they are impact-bat indicators. Greene consistently did damage when he made contact, particularly on pitches he could lift to the pull side or drive into the gaps.

His sweet-spot rate remained strong (36.9%), reinforcing that the power output wasn’t driven by lucky launch angles or pull-only swings. Greene generated lift naturally, without selling out completely for fly balls.

Greene continued to do his best work against velocity:

While the run value against fastballs dipped slightly from 2024, pitchers clearly continued to treat Greene as a hitter they could not challenge repeatedly. As a result, he saw more breaking and offspeed pitches than earlier in his career — a shift that directly ties into his rising strikeout totals.

Greene did damage against certain breaking pitches:

But the swing-and-miss rates tell the other side of the story:

This is where Scott Harris’s comments come into focus. Greene’s approach maximized damage, but it also produced empty at-bats — particularly late in counts, when pitchers avoided the zone.

From 2024 to 2025, Greene became more aggressive:

That aggressiveness helped unlock power, but it also reduced his margin for error. Greene didn’t lose his ability to hit the ball hard — he lost some control over when he attacked.

Notably, his walk rate dropped to 7.0%, while his strikeout rate climbed to 30.7%. The combination explains how Greene could post elite power numbers while still finishing with 200-plus strikeouts.

Greene’s rolling xwOBA shows peaks early in the season and again late, with a dip during the post-All-Star stretch — the same period when Detroit’s offense struggled as a whole. This supports Harris’ broader point: when Greene’s contact rate stabilized, the offense followed.

Greene’s Statcast profile does not suggest a hitter who needs to tear things down. It suggests one who is one adjustment away from becoming a complete offensive force.

The power is real. The contact quality is elite. The remaining question for 2026 is whether Greene can trim strikeouts at the margins, particularly on pitches just off the plate, without sacrificing the aggressiveness that made his breakout possible.

If that balance is found, Detroit isn’t just looking at a 30-home-run hitter. It’s looking at a hitter capable of anchoring an offense deep into October.

If 2025 proved anything, it’s that the Detroit Tigers finally possess something that had been missing for nearly a decade: a legitimate, homegrown power core. With Spencer Torkelson and Riley Greene both clearing the 30-home-run threshold, the foundation of the lineup is no longer theoretical.

The question heading into 2026 isn’t whether the power is real — the Statcast data answers that decisively. The question is whether Detroit can pair that power with more efficient at-bats.

That’s where the comments from Scott Harris matter. Harris isn’t asking Greene or Torkelson to stop being who they are. He’s asking the offense to give fewer at-bats away, particularly in key spots where contact , even imperfect contact,  can move the game forward. 

The encouraging part is that neither hitter’s profile suggests this is an unrealistic ask. It also ties into what Harris said about the team improving interally. 

Torkelson’s 2025 showed a hitter who reasserted fastball dominance, improved swing decisions, and generated power without extreme chase. Greene’s profile showed elite contact quality and damage potential that, with marginal adjustments to zone control, could translate into fewer empty trips without sacrificing slug.

If even modest gains are made, trimming strikeouts by 20–30 between the two while maintaining barrel rates,  the impact on run production could be significant. That kind of improvement doesn’t just stabilize an offense; it changes late-game outcomes, shortens innings for opposing starters, and reduces pressure on a pitching staff that felt the strain late in 2025.

In other words, 2026 doesn’t require a reinvention. It requires refinement.

The Tigers don’t need Greene to stop swinging big or Torkelson to abandon lift. They need both hitters to pair their power with intent, turning strength into sustainability. If that happens, Detroit’s offense won’t just flash for months at a time,  it will be capable of carrying the club through an entire season.

And if that’s the case, the conversation next winter won’t be about what went wrong after the All-Star break. It will be about how a young core learned to turn raw power into something lasting

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