Tarik Skubal sizzles with 100-mph heat as Tigers blast past Astros
Chris McCosky
Detroit — With one of the most iconic pitchers in Tigers history sitting in the visitors’ dugout, a lot of the pregame talk Saturday centered on 27-year-old Tarik Skubal and how he might someday measure up to Justin Verlander’s legacy.
“One thing that all great pitchers do, all the top, high-end major league pitchers do, is they just stack good outing after good outing,” said manager AJ Hinch. “There’s very little variance. You don’t see the high-end pitchers at this level just disappear for stretches. They just stack good outings.”
Skubal, as if on cue, worked his fifth straight quality start, subduing the Houston Astros for six-plus innings as the Tigers evened the series with an 8-2 win at Comerica Park.
He walked off to a standing ovation from the announced crowd of 27,140 with two on and one out in the seventh.
"That was pretty cool," Skubal said. "The home opener here I got the same thing but I was upset. So I made sure to enjoy this one."
Reliever Shelby Miller got Yordan Alvarez to hit into a double play to end the seventh and finish Skubal’s two-run effort.
"Tarik is so good at tunnel vision," Hinch said. "He doesn't really look at the scoreboard and he tries not carry one inning into the next one. He just sees the challenge that's in front of him and that's the maturity that's really important when you are the type of pitcher Tarik can be."
It wasn’t his most dominant start of the season (seven hits, two walks) but early on, especially before the Tigers blew the game open with a seven-run second inning, Skubal was in full control.
In the second inning, he threw two 100-mph pitches, one a four-seam fastball, the other a sinker. It was the first official, Statcast-validated, 100-mph pitches of his career.
"Was it a legit one?" Skubal asked. "I saw 99.9 on the board. I'll be interested to read my reports tomorrow to see if it was a legit 100."
Statcast read both at 100 mph.
"I've always joked about it, just doing it once in my career," Skubal said. "It's not the only thing I think about, obviously. I'm trying to elevate a fastball there. But I think it's pretty cool."
As his outing rolled on, he ended up letting his changeup do most of the heavy lifting, getting six whiffs on 17 swings and six called strikes with it. Seven changeups were put in play with an average exit velocity of 86 mph.
"If anything, I thought he made adjustments faster because we were ahead," Hinch said. "Which I thought was really encouraging. They do their homework over there and they were swinging early. You can't just throw fastballs down the middle. That lineup can do a lot of damage.
"He started spinning breaking balls, he even started throwing that top-down curveball and his changeup was really good. He got a lot more unpredictable as the game went on."
He finished with seven strikeouts.
It was Skubal's fifth win of the season with a 2.02 ERA. He’s keeping himself in the early Cy Young award conversation and seems on track to make his first All-Star appearance.
“There’s one thing to pitch when you have upside, there’s another thing to pitch when you have expectations and another thing to pitch when the entire league is talking about you,” Hinch said. “If Tarik keeps stacking good outings, the numbers will take care of themselves. The exposure will get there, the conversations will happen and we’re going to win a lot of ballgames.
“The day he pitches is a day we expect to win.”
It’s been feast or famine for the Tigers’ offense this month but they ate well on Saturday, particularly against Astros starter Cristian Javier, who was making his first start since April 14, coming back from a neck injury.
He didn’t make it out of the second inning.
"That was a huge step in the right direction," said Spencer Torkelson, who extended his hitting streak to six games. "Felt like we got really good pitches to hit and we did some damage on pitches that weren't good to hit. That's what we're capable of. We just have to keep it going."
Javier contributed to his own demise in the second inning with a couple of walks, but the home run ball did him in. After he walked Riley Greene with the bases loaded to force in a run, Mark Canha followed with his third career grand slam.
"We talked about being super disciplined but also be ready and be on go from the beginning," Hinch said. "Both of those things can happen and Canha showed that. The at-bats before him have to be good for him to have that moment. I was really proud of our team approach."
Wenceel Perez followed with a double and then Kerry Carpenter swatted the first of his two home runs. The first one was a laser shot that landed in the short shrubs just beyond the right-field wall.
Carpenter struck again in the fourth inning against right-hander and Wayne State product Hunter Brown. He barreled up a two-strike, 97.5-mph fastball and knocked it 384 feet to left-center.
"It was fun," said Carpenter, who last homered on April 17. "I just had the freedom to enjoy it today. I know I hadn't hit a homer in a while but I wasn't really worried about it. I hit some balls off the wall in Cleveland so I knew it was going to come eventually."
It was the third multi-homer game of his career, and the fourth and fifth homers this season.
"Skube doesn't need a lot (of run support)," Carpenter said. "But we love supporting our pitching staff. They've won a lot of games for us."
Carpenter was asked what it was like watching Skubal perform every fifth day.
"It's like watching one of the best pitchers in the world right now," he said. "And we get an up-close-and-personal view of it. It's pretty fun."
chris.mccosky@detroitnews.com
@cmccosky