ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Riley Greene, for the first time in his young career, slugged a pair of home runs in a game and powered the Tigers to a 4-2 come-from-behind win over the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field Tuesday night.

Greene’s 426-foot solo home run to dead center field in the third inning was the extent of the Tigers’ offense until the eighth inning.

But down 2-1, Greene stepped in against lefty reliever Colin Poche. Catcher Carson Kelly singled to start the inning and Greene, who is the major league leader in walks (21), was in ambush mode. He locked onto a first-pitch four-seam fastball (90 mph) and smoked it, 408 feet into the seats in right.

One batter later, Mark Canha, who homered on Monday, went down and launched a low breaking ball into the seats in left. Greene (6) and Canha (5) are your Tigers’ home run leaders. Their blasts countered a two-run homer by former Tiger Isaac Paredes off reliever Alex Faedo in the bottom of the sixth.

The Tigers (14-10) are now 10-3 on the road and unbeaten in five straight road series to start the season. That hasn’t happened since 2007.

The other highlight for the Tigers was the return to form of veteran right-hander Kenta Maeda, who came in with an ERA pushing 8.

You knew things might be different for him, though, when he walked out with high socks on for the first time this season. He was a man out to change his fortunes and he didn’t care what it took.

You also knew things were different when his second pitch of his outing was a sinker. He hadn’t thrown that pitch since last season. Not once had he used it with the Tigers. And for sure it was going to be a different night his first 12 pitches were strikes.

Maeda rebounded nicely from his worst outing of the season, where he was tagged for six runs (five earned) by the Rangers in 2 2/3 innings with a less-than-stellar 55% strike rate, blanking the Rays on three singles over five innings.

He was in command, he was creative and he was impervious to three potentially costly errors made behind him. He had to essentially get five outs in the first inning after an error by shortstop Javier Báez and a catcher’s interference on Carson Kelly put two on with no outs.

But he not only got out of it — getting Randy Arozarena to ground into a double play — he did so with just eight pitches, all strikes.

Maeda brought all of his seven flavors with him — four-seam, sinker, slider, splitter, sweeper, cutter and curveball — and he mixed them brilliantly.

With a runner on third (who reached on an error by second baseman Colt Keith) and one out in the third, Maeda struck out Richie Palacios. He got behind in the count 2-0 with sweepers, then went sweeper (called strike), splitter (swinging strike), slider (swinging strike three).

He got Amed Rosario to pop out to second to end the inning, mixing in sinkers, four-seamers, sliders and splitters.

He won a 10-pitch fight with Paredes in the fourth inning. Paredes fouled off four straight 2-2 pitches. The first of those was maybe the worst pitch Maeda threw — a center-cut 90-mph four-seamer that somehow Paredes missed. After that, every pitch was away and finally Maeda got him to chase a slider well outside the zone.

He got ahead of 13 of the 20 batters he faced and had a strike percentage of 67%.

Maeda finished his night retiring Palacios again, this time with runners at first and second.

Faedo pitched a scoreless seventh and Alex Lange a scoreless eighth. Jason Foley pitched a clean ninth for his seventh save.

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