Since Riley Greene came to the ballpark last Sunday amid the Tigers' worst stretch of the season with a mustache befitting a sheriff, the club hasn't lost. Adding to the aura, Greene homered and smacked two doubles in Tuesday night's 12-2 win over the Diamondbacks, Detroit's third straight victory after dropping 12 of 13. It would appear the 'stache has staying power.
"It’s not a good look!" Greene said with a laugh. "It’s not a good look. But if it means winning, I’ll keep it."
The mustache might have some mystique. Gleyber Torres gave it a tickle in the dugout after Greene went deep in the fifth, two batters after Torres hit a bomb himself. Greene said Zach McKinstry also gave it a stroke on Tuesday and delivered a two-run bomb of his own. In fact, "a lot of people touched it today," said Greene. "Whatever gets the boys going, you know?"
"They’re touching it everywhere, wherever they want to," he said.
"We’ve all touched it," said A.J. Hinch. "In the handshake line he said, 'We’re 3-0 with the stache.' There’s a little bit of belief in there."
Stylistically, reviews on the mustache are mixed. For an expert opinion on the matter, we bring in Lions offensive lineman Graham Glasgow, who has a Pro Bowl-caliber 'stache of his own.
Grading Greene's new look, Glasgow said Tuesday on 97.1 The Ticket, "I think that's pretty close to a 10. I don’t think you can ever give out a perfect 10, but that’s probably a 9.7."
"It’s got good thickness, good width. I like that it’s not, like, over into his mouth too much. You can tell that he’s really manicuring it maybe once every two, three days. He’s putting a lot of effort into that, and for that I can say, good work," Glasgow said.
While the Tigers were slumping, so was Greene. He entered Tuesday hitting .163 with 37 strikeouts in his last 20 games. He finally snapped out of it with his first three-hit game this month.
"It’s momentum," he said. "You get one hit, you get another one, you get another one. It’s just nice to see some of those fall, and you go after that."
As for the Tigers coming out of their larger rut, "it’s the game of baseball," said Greene, "and I feel like every good team goes through something like this. I think it just showed that us as a team, we stayed confident, we kept going and we got out of it."
"But we’ve only won three games," he said, "so we gotta keep going and make this happen."