Here Comes Riley Greene!

I don’t think the Tigers’ year could have started any better. Tarik Skubal picked up right where he left off after last year’s breakthrough Cy Young season. Casey Mize, the first pick in the 2018 draft, is finally healthy, and he leads the league in wins. Jackson Jobe, the No. 3 pick in the 2021 draft, is getting his feet under him and pitching pretty darned well. The marvelously-named-prospect-turned-suspect-turned-prospect-again Spencer Torkelson has found his home run swing. Manager A.J. Hinch is doing some magic with the bullpen; he really might just be the best manager in the game.

And the Tigers roared into first place … even though their best player, Riley Greene, seemed to be in a sort of funk. He wasn’t terrible or anything, but Greene has had scouts slobbering for a while now, and last year he showed just a few signs of a potential MVP future, and with the Detroit rager in full frenzy, it just seemed a little bit off to have Greene not at the center of it all wearing a lampshade on his head.

Well, don’t look now …

Oh yeah, our guy Riley Greene is heating up. He came into Friday night hot — he was hitting .400 with a .733 slugging in his last eight games — but that was all an opening act. Friday in Anaheim, Greene came up in the top of the ninth with the score tied at 1 to face California’s venerable closer Kenley Jansen.

Kenley, even at age 584, had not allowed a run yet this year. That changed on the third pitch when he threw the cutter that has broken a million hearts, but he threw it as close to the middle of the plate as geometrically possible, and Greene smoked in 104 mph on a line drive to right field. The only question was whether it had the height to get over the wall.

It did. The Tigers led.

Things got pretty bad from there — Jansen gave up another homer, this time to Javy Baez, and the Tigers kept going, and Jake Eder came in to relieve Jansen, and what do you know, Riley Greene came to the plate again. Eder tried a sweeper. Greene swept it out 409 feet to right field for another home run.

He is the first player in baseball history to hit two home runs in the ninth inning of a baseball game.

OK, I know you want a quick historical rundown, so here goes.

— In all, a player has homered twice in an inning 67 different times, going all the way back to the Red Stockings’ Charley Jones in June of 1880. He hit the second one off Kenley Jansen.*

— Five players have done it twice. They include:

• Edwin Encarnación (in 2013 and 2019)

• Alex Rodriguez (in 2007 and 2009)

• Jeff King (in 1995 and 1996)

• Andre Dawson (in 1978 and 1985)

• Willie McCovey (in 1973 and 1977)

— The most popular inning to hit two home runs is the sixth inning. Happened 13 times, most recently by Encarnación in 2019.

• 1st inning: 5 times

• 2nd inning: 7 times

• 3rd inning: 8 times

• 4th inning: 9 times

• 5th inning: 9 times

• 6th inning: 13 times

• 7th inning: 7 times

• 8th inning: 8 times

• 9th inning: 1 time

— The most popular month for hitting two homers in an inning is August with 13, though these tend to be pretty well spread out over the season.

• April: 11 times

• May: 11 times

• June: 12 times

• July: 11 times

• August: 13 times

• September: 7 times

• October: 2 times

— I would have guessed that the year it happened the most often was 2019 since that was the wacky juiced ball year, but nope, it only happened once in 2019. The year it happened the most was 2002 — it happened SEVEN times in 2002.

In fact, on May 2, 2002, in Chicago — as I’m sure you Mariners fans remember — Mike Cameron and Bret Boone BOTH homered twice in the first inning — they hit back-to-back homers off Jon Rauch and then hit back-to-back homers off Jim Parque. That was the day Mike Cameron hit four home runs. Bret Boone, alas, had to settle for his two.

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