The Royal treatment
Tigers off to best start in decade, thanks to their unquestioned ace Skubal shuts down Kansas City, Perez homers in 4-1 win
It’s April, yes. And the Detroit Tigers are looking up at two teams in their division. But this is fun, no?
It’s also new. Well, relatively speaking, for the last time the Tigers began a season like this Barack Obama was living in the White House and Ian Kinsler was manning second base.
The year was 2014, and the Tigers made the playoffs. Again, it’s April, and the leaves aren’t even out. Yet dismissing this 16-12 start after beating Kansas City on Sunday, 4-1, would be premature, too.
For context, here are the Tigers’ previous five records at the 28-game mark: 11-17, 8-20, 8-20, 1216 and 13-15. The last time they were above .500 28 games into the season was 2017, at 15-13.
Yes, the Tigers lost 98 games that season, quite an accomplishment after a relatively solid start.
Tarik Skubal mowed down 20 in a stretch of 21 batters.
The first two batters reached safely in the first inning, which led to a run. Skubal then responded by retiring 14 batters in a row before an infield single in the fifth inning, and after the harmless single, he cooked through six batters in a row.
The Detroit Tigers were in control for all nine innings, thanks to Skubal’s steady dominance, in Sunday’s 4-1 win over the the Kansas City Royals, taking two of three games in the series at Comerica Park.
“We got him the lead back right after the top of the first,” manager A.J. Hinch said, “and it looked like he hit another gear. That’s what the big boys do, the guys you expect to anchor a staff. He showed it and was dominant.”
After retiring 20 of his first 23 batters, Skubal ran into trouble against his final three batters with two outs in the seventh inning. He walked Hunter Renfroe on five pitches and gave up a two-strike
So, again, it is April, and the Tigers are second in the league in comeback wins, a stat that doesn’t seem sustainable.
Saturday’s 6-5 win is a good example, when they scored five runs on the Royals’ bullpen in the seventh and hung on to win. Errors helped put them in the hole Saturday, a recent trend, and as A.J. Hinch said after the game, that pattern isn’t sustainable, either.
On Sunday, they played clean baseball. They needed to. It had been a minute. It helped that they had their ace on the mound.
Tarik Skubal gave up a run in the first inning on a seeing-eye double and a single, then he settled in, retiring 14 straight batters at one point, and didn’t give up another run. He pitched seven innings, the longest he has pitched this season. He gave up four hits and struck out six.
That last number is notable as the Royals’ hitters aren’t easy to strike out, even as they tend to jump on first pitches. They are an aggressive group, and a group skilled in making contact.
They attacked Skubal early and often. Once he figured out the pattern — he has struggled against the Royals recently — he began to attack them, making sure not to give them anything to hit on the first pitch, so they’d have more guessing to do on the second.
Sometimes with his fastball, a 96-98 m.p.h. nuisance that runs in on righties. And sometimes with a slider or curveball, sweepers that start from his slightly unconventional motion and release point and break violently through the zone.
The changeup, though, is the pitch that flummoxed the Royals, and the pitch, said his manager, that has “changed his trajectory as a pitcher, especially against an aggressive team that likes to swing.”
Part of what makes it so deadly is that it doesn’t look any different from his fastball coming out of his hand. And part of what makes it tough is his ability to place it. He also
changes speeds, as he did a few times against Kansas City, at one point starting off a batter with four consecutive changeups.
He went from 83 to 85 to 87 on his first three, earning two strikes, and when Freddy Fermin fell behind 1-2 in the count, he had no idea what was coming next. Well, another changeup came, of course. Fermin struck out swinging.
That’s a lot to deal with for a hitter when he knows that fastball is out there, and capable of ripping across the plate pushing triple digits. That’s a lot of heat, too, especially for a lefty, though Hinch was quick to remind that Skubal
isn’t a thrower but a pitcher.
“The at-bat dictates the velocity,” Skubal said.
And do, batters don’t know what’s coming, and when it does come, it comes in less-thanideal spots. These are the qualities of an ace, of course. So is this, said Hinch:
“He knows what he’s doing with how he disrupts timing. You may ambush him once and get away with it but he’s a smart guy who knows how the art of pitching works.”
The Tigers know when he starts, they have more than a chance to win, to end a losing streak, to tilt a series, as Skubal helped do
Sunday. The victory gave the Tigers the series over Kansas City, as they won the last two after getting blitzed late in the game Friday night.
It was the kind of win that playoff hopeful teams win. Split the first two, then find a way to take the series.
Kansas City leaves town just a half game ahead of the Tigers. Cleveland, the leader, remains three games clear. Yet there is something to be said for hanging around this time of year.
For so long, the Tigers fell out of the race before May. Maybe not by math, but surely by spirit, and when the weather began to turn, they were playing for development and little else.
This year’s team is still developing players, obviously, but the combination of youth and experience and relentlessness is leading to wins. Sure, Hinch would prefer cleaner games, like Sunday’s, because he knows the odds of clawing back in the late innings isn’t the way to stay in a playoff chase all summer.
But he loves the character of this team and the way it keeps finding ways to make plays, like when Wenceel Perez, long of the minor leagues, hit his first homer in the first inning to give the Tigers a 2-1 lead.
“He’s fearless, joyful, (and) he believes in himself,” Hinch said of Perez.
He is also unafraid to make a mistake. A trait Hinch credits to his comfort in his own skin.
“He’s just a fun guy to be around,” he said. You might say the same of the entire team, and certainly of Skubal, whose burly intensity on the mound belies a dry and subversive sense of humor off it. Baseball may not demand the camaraderie of football or hockey, but chemistry still matters.
And these days, the vibes are good. Which isn’t surprising, because the Tigers are good, too. How good is a question they’ll answer daily, weekly and eventually monthly.
For now, though, they keep answering, led by a burgeoning ace.
“That’s what the big boys do,” said Hinch.