Tarik the terrific! Skubal 1st to 200 K's in career-best 8-inning gem

DETROIT -- The ovation for Tarik Skubal as the Tigers left-hander headed from the mound to the dugout after the seventh inning Saturday was standing and rousing, fueled by a crowd of 34,355 that had celebrated the 1984 World Series champions before the game. It was appreciated in turn by Skubal, who made a point to acknowledge.

It was also premature. After just 84 pitches over seven innings of one-run ball, Skubal didn’t have manager A.J. Hinch’s usual end-of-start handshake waiting for him at the end of his walk. He got the fist bump that signaled another inning instead.

“They were giving him the standing ovation, and I’m like, ‘No, no, no, you’re going to go out again,’” Hinch said after Saturday’s 2-1 win over the Red Sox.

After 15 outings of seven innings, Skubal pitched into the eighth for the first time in his career. The 99 mph fastball past Ceddanne Rafaela on Skubal’s 98th and final pitch, and the scream into the sky after Rafaela fanned, showed how much that meant.

“He took a really good changeup, so when [catcher] Jake Rogers called the heater, I got pretty amped up,” Skubal said. “I was going to throw it as hard as I could and see what happens.”

Skubal has thrown 99-plus with regularity this season, including nine in the triple digits, but they’re usually in his early innings. He threw 99-plus six times Saturday, including three times in the seventh inning and twice in the eighth. Another eighth-inning pitch nearly cracked it at 98.9 mph.

“Fastball at 99, sinker, slider, changeup,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora marveled. “He’s probably the best pitcher in the American League right now. This guy, we saw him in Spring Training and we knew he was going to have a big year, and that was a statement game for him. He should probably win the Cy Young.”

It was shades of Max Scherzer, who preached in his Tiger tenure of making his final 15 pitches of a game his best, or of Justin Verlander, who learned to save his toughest fastballs for when he needed them late.

Skubal doesn’t pace himself; he doesn’t want to wait until potentially trailing to throw his best stuff. He reached back and found extra for that.

“He’s a good finisher. That’s what it says,” Hinch said. “It’s a one-run game against the Red Sox in a packed house. That will bring an extra little adrenaline juice to you.”

On a night like this, it was fitting.

After the Tigers honored their last World Series title, Skubal took the same mound where the Commissioner’s Trophy stood before the game and made some history of his own. With eight strikeouts, he became the fourth Tigers left-hander ever to post a 200-strikeout season, joining Mickey Lolich (seven times from 1965 to 1974), Hall of Famer Hal Newhouser (1945 and ’46) and Matthew Boyd (238 strikeouts in 2019).

While Skubal became the first pitcher to 200 strikeouts and 16 wins this season, he continued his path toward joining Newhouser (1945) and Verlander (2011) as the only Tigers to win a pitching Triple Crown. He lowered his ERA to an MLB-best 2.51 while improving to 8-1 over his last 12 starts.

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More important to Skubal, he helped the Tigers rebound from back-to-back losses and stay within sight of the AL Wild Card race. The Tigers have won in each of his last five outings, many of them during a stretch when they’ve needed his innings as one of two traditional starters in an injury-depleted rotation.

Skubal’s only blemish was a first-inning home run from Tyler O’Neill, who crushed a 1-0 slider that Skubal thought was a good pitch. When Trey Sweeney’s two-run double in the second inning put Detroit in front, Skubal quashed any idea of an answer. Jarren Duran singled and reached second on Skubal’s throwing error with two outs in the third, but Skubal fanned Rob Refsnyder on a 98 mph fastball to end the threat.

Skubal avenged the O’Neill home run by striking him out looking at a 97 mph fastball at the top of the zone in the fourth inning, then fanning him on back-to-back changeups to strand a runner in the sixth for No. 200.

“He’s one of the best pitchers in the league,” O’Neill said. “He’s got three plus pitches. That’s a lot to cover. He did a really good job tonight.”