Detroit — The Tigers will come to the ballpark on Sunday having spent the last 137 days in first place all by themselves in the Central Division. They’ve held at least a share of the top spot for 154 of the last 155 days, going back to April 5.
For all the hand-wringing that’s gone on externally, outside the clubhouse doors, especially recently when they lost eight of 11, they hold an 8.5-game lead over the Kansas City Royals with 19 games left.
“When you don’t ride the rollercoaster sometimes and you don’t get too down or too high and you just run the race, you look up and we’re pretty good,” said manager AJ Hinch after the Tigers breezed to a 6-0 win over the Chicago White Sox Saturday before a crowd of 32,115 at Comerica Park. “Our guys have been able to put up innings and put up numbers and put up zeros and just continue to chip away at the win total.
“I’m proud of our guys because we don’t really ride the good game-bad game thing. We just come out and compete.”
It is a comfort, though, especially after a messy loss in the series opener, to be able to lean on a legitimate ace to restore some order.
Facing the White Sox for the first time this season, lefty Tarik Skubal pitched seven scoreless, two-hit innings, helping the Tigers snap Chicago’s six-game winning streak.
“He had to battle tonight,” Hinch said. “He didn’t have is best stuff early. I can’t remember the last time I saw him walk the leadoff batter. He had to go into battle mode.”
Which he did, erasing that walk with a fast double-play ball and facing the minimum 12 hitters through four innings. The first hit came on a two-out, bloop double to left by Bryan Ramos in the fifth.
“Yeah, I thought the first couple of innings I probably wasn’t commanding the baseball the way I expect myself to,” Skubal said. “But as the game got on, I got better and better.”
Skubal, with his 12th scoreless start of at least six innings this season, padded the franchise record he established in his previous start. It was also his 13th pitcher win and it lowered his American League-best ERA to 2.10.
And not for nothing, it was the Tigers’ MLB-tying best 16th shutout of the season.
Skubal came into the game leading the American League in 13 different pitcher categories and he only strengthened his bid to be the first American League pitcher to win back to back Cy Young Awards since Pedro Martinez.
“I don’t think by any means I’m a finished product,” he said. “I want to keep pushing the threshold and see kind of what I’m capable of. Tomorrow is a new day. I don’t think whoever I’m pitching against next (Miami), they’re not going to care what I have done. That’s the beauty of baseball.”
Hinch told Skubal after the sixth that the seventh inning would be his last. He was at 83 pitches. But he got through the seventh in just seven pitches.
“I thought he was going to give me the eighth,” Skubal said with a smile. “I thought I did a good job putting him in a tough spot.”
Skubal worked with little room for error through the first four innings before the Tigers hitters were finally rewarded for their patience against White Sox lefty starter Martin Perez.
Jahmai Jones set the tone, smashing Perez’s second pitch into the bullpen in left field. It was the second time in five games Jones led off the Tigers’ half of the first inning with a dinger.
“Just me reacting,” said Jones, who raised his OPS to .923. “Just being ready for my pitch in a plus count and trying to put a good swing on it. Thankfully, it found a barrel.”
There were a batch of barrel shots early against Perez, but for a couple of innings, none were rewarded with hits. Riley Greene hit a ball 414 feet that was caught at the wall in center. Andy Ibanez hit one to the wall in right-center that was caught.
Dillon Dingler hit one into the triangle in right-center that was caught.
“If you look over the last two weeks, I don’t think it’s very indicative of how our offense has been,” Jones said. “I think we’ve hit a lot of balls hard and put a lot of balls on the barrel that unfortunately, baseball happened and they got caught. But I think the guys are putting together a lot of good swings.
“Just haven’t been rewarded as much as they’d like. Tonight we found some grass out there.”
BOX SCORE: Tigers 6, White Sox 0
The ball in play gods evened things up for the Tigers in the fourth. An infield single by Greene, a walk to Ibanez, a bloop, RBI double by Zach McKinstry and a sacrifice fly by Javier Báez made it 3-0.
Then, the kill shot: Gleyber Torres launched his 15th homer of the season, a two-out, three-run blast to left, capping the five-run fourth inning.
“We did have really good at-bats and not all of them resulted in hits and sometimes that can get frustrating,” Hinch said. “With Tarik on the mound, you feel like if we can just get the lead, it puts so much pressure on them. I thought we did a really good job in the first half of the game connecting at-bats and doing our part to keep the pressure on them.”
Jones was asked if he could’ve imagined playing such a key role on a first-place team in September when he showed up as a non-roster invitee at spring training in February. His answer tells you how snugly he’s ingrained into the DNA of this baseball team.
“I’m not trying to live in the past or live in the future,” he said. “Like, the biggest thing is to just enjoy where my feet are now and try to play as well as I can to help this team win. Our season is not over. These last (19) games, this is a stretch of games we need to win to put together some good baseball leading into October.”
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