Detroit — Did he have thoughts of throwing a perfect game as he walked off the mound in the fifth inning Friday night.
“Oh-ho yeah,” Tarik Skubal said with a laugh. “After one inning.”
He’s been dominant all season. He’s been especially dominant at Comerica Park since the start of last season. But on Friday, in the Tigers’ 2-1 win over the Texas Rangers, Skubal might’ve been as dominant as he’s ever been.
“I thought I had a chance of doing something special tonight,” he said. “You need a lot of things to go right, but I thought the stuff was coming out of my hand pretty good early … I felt like I had a chance and there’s not a lot of times you feel like you have a chance.”
Fact is, he did do something special. He was perfect for five innings and when he walked off to a standing ovation after the seventh, he’d posted a season-high 12 strikeouts and a career-high 32 whiffs on 59 swings.
The 32 whiffs was the most by any pitcher in a game this season and the most ever by a Tigers pitcher dating back to 2008 when swing-and-misses started being recorded.
BOX SCORE: Tigers 2, Rangers 1
“It was a completely dominant performance,” manager AJ Hinch said. “He was in complete control of almost every at-bat. I think he had one three-ball count and he came back and punched him out. I don’t know how to describe it except to say he was in complete control and it was incredible to watch from my seat.”
A couple of two-strike hits were the only blemish. Josh Smith poked a ball through the left side of the infield to lead off the sixth inning. And after Skubal hit Ezequiel Duran with a pitch, Sam Haggerty blooped a single to right, scoring Smith.
Skubal went on from there to strike out three of the last five hitters he faced and completed seven innings in 96 pitches (70 strikes).
“He pounds the zone,” Hinch said. “I know it’s easier said than done but he’s relentless at attacking the hitter and not just with one pitch. His changeup was probably as good as I’ve ever seen it in my time here and his fastball was electric.”
In his last six starts, Skubal has recorded 50 strikeouts and just one walk covering 37 innings. His ERA in that stretch is 0.97. He’s the only pitcher in baseball since ERA became a stat in 1913 to achieve those numbers in a span of six starts.
“I don’t like walking guys,” Skubal said, when told of those statistics. “I want guys to earn their way on first base. I don’t like walks or hitting guys. I don’t want to give up free bases because that run ultimately comes around and scores.”
Skubal came out hot, firing eight fastballs in the first three innings, ringing them in between 99.3 and 99.8 mph. He ended up averaging 98.1 mph and hitting 100 in the seventh inning. There was a method to that particular madness.
He was trying to set a tone for his travel-weary teammates.
“It’s always good to get home,” said Skubal, who is now 13-1 at Comerica Park since the start of 2024. “We had a long road trip and guys got in late (2 a.m. after a doubleheader in Colorado). You could expect a low-energy game but I didn’t want that to happen. Guys came out and played good baseball.”
He got 13 whiffs on 26 swings with the four-seamer and seven whiffs on 11 swings with the sinker. And with the changeup, he got 11 whiffs on 20 swings.
“I think it’s just heavy,” catcher Dillon Dingler said of Skubal’s heater. “We talk about it a lot … That’s a lot of movement coming at you. Even catching it, it’s heavy. It’s a mixture of, there’s a lot of movement and it’s 99 to 100.”
Powerful performance.
“You can see teams trying to let the ball travel because of the changeup,” Hinch said. “You can see where they have to sit on one or the other and that’s an equalizer. It’s tough to time up 99 mph along with that devastating changeup.”
Skubal’s emotions flared in the fifth after a pitch that seemed to clearly deflect off the nob of Marcus Semien’s bat was called a ball by home plate umpire Malachi Moore. Hinch came out to discuss the call.
“I know it was a foul ball,” Hinch said. “You could hear it from my seat. It hit multiple things, it hit the bat, it hit Dingler and it hit the umpire. I just wanted him to tell me what it hit. It had to be the bat. But there is no mechanism to fix it.”
Skubal started barking at Moore when he got two strikes on Semien. Dingler moved quickly to get in between Skubal and Moore.
“Just the emotions of the game,” Hinch said. “When Tarik got a couple of strikes on him, I think he let the umpire know that was the third strike.”
Skubal got Semien to ground out and punched out Josh Jung to end the inning.
Another fun moment. After Skubal struck out Semien for the second out in the seventh, second baseman Gleyber Torres strolled up to Skubal on the mound.
“That was the most important mound visit I ever had,” Skubal said with a smile. “He came up and said, ‘Just giving you a breather.’ I said, ‘Put you hand on my chest, feel my heart.’ It was beating pretty fast. He was just being a pro and that’s what he’s come into our clubhouse and done. That was awesome.
“I don’t really like calling guys out to the mound, but I was going to have to call out Ding or Fett (pitching coach Chris Fetter). But Gleyber did it and I Iove that. He’s a pro’s pro.”
The Tigers scratched single runs off lefty Patrick Corbin in the second and fourth innings, and Colt Keith’s fingerprints were on both.
He scored from first base on a bloop double to left-center by Dingler in the second. With two outs, he never stopped running, never assumed the ball would be caught.
In the fourth, he ripped a two-out single to score Riley Greene. Greene walked to lead off the inning and stole second.
Tommy Kahnle pitched a scoreless eighth and Will Vest, going through the teeth of the Rangers lineup in the ninth (Wyatt Langford, Johan Heim and Adolis Garcia) earned his fourth save.
It was the Tigers’ fifth straight win, moving them 13 games over .500 to (26-13), their best 39-game start since 2014.
“Sounds good, doesn’t it,” Skubal said when the record was mentioned. “We’ve done so many different things well. We play a really good brand of baseball…We’ve done a lot of good things and we win a lot of different ways. We won by a lot the last two games and we grinded out a win today.
“I don’t think teams enjoy playing us. We do a lot of little things right.”
@cmccosky
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