Tarik Skubal posted one of his worst outings of the season, and the bullpen was a disaster.
Tarik Skubal struggled on Friday night, and the Tigers bullpen sent a desperate plea for help to Scott Harris with their worst performance of the season. The Mariners homered three times, two of them from Cal Raleigh, and pounded out 11 hits to crush the kitties on Friday night in Comerica Park.
The last time these teams met up was in the second series of the season on the Detroit Tigers west coast swing to open the season. They were coming off a hard fought set of games against the LA Dodgers in which they lost all three, and people were a bit restless. The Tigers won the first two games of the set to take the series, and they were off and running.
The Mariners were on a roll for a while and leading the AL West, but they’ve since been overtaken by the Houston Astros and are now just a couple games over .500 and seven games back of Houston.
The Tigers were in their divisive blue/black City Connect uniforms, with the Mariners in their teal jerseys and grey pants in front of pretty good Friday night crowd in Detroit who would not see their team at its best in this one.
Tarik Skubal opened the game by hitting J.P. Crawford in the arm, and that proved a harbinger of things to come. A possible double play ball off the bat of Julio Rodriguez was dropped for a second by Javier Báez, and an already tough runner to turn two against was safe. No matter, as Skubal got Cal Raleigh to ground to McKinstry, starting the 5-4-3 double play.
Gleyber Torres walked with one out in the bottom half against Luis Castillo, but the right-hander got Wenceel Pérez to ground into a double play as well.
Skubal got the first two outs of the second inning, but he wasn’t locating quite as well as you expect and Jorge Polanco lined a single to right field. Donovan Solano lined one to center field and Parker Meadows got caught between, hesitating before diving for the ball and missing. The ball rolled way out toward the right center field wall before Pérez ran it down. By then Solano was on third and the Mariners had a 1-0 lead. Skubal retired Dylan Moore on a fly ball to limit the damage.
The Tigers got a Riley Greene single, but Spencer Torkelson grounded into a double play and Zach McKinstry followed suit with a ground out to end the second inning.
Skubal was still misfiring a little more than normal in the third. He issued a one-out walk to Crawford, but bounced back to strike out Rodriguez. Still that brought the extremely dangerous Cal Raleigh back up with a runner on base. A first pitch ball was followed by a pair of nasty changeups for whiffs, and Skubal reared back and blew Raleigh away with 99 mph down the gut.
Parker Meadows singled with one out in the bottom half. Javy Báez popped out into shallow left field, and Colt Keith flew out to left to end the inning.
Skubal set the Mariners down in order in the top of the fourth, punching out Mitch Garver swinging for his fourth of the game. He was at 59 pitches, so not quite as efficient as usual but seemingly settled in.
The Tigers finally leaned on Castillo and broke through. Torres drew a leadoff walk and Pérez lined a single to right field. Riley Greene went fishing a lifted a fly out to left field and Spencer Torkelson struck out with Castillo just bullying him with fastballs. Zach McKinstry appeared to have struck out on a changeup down to end the inning, but it was checked and ruled a foul tip into the dirt on a changeup.
The Mariners were already walking off the field, and the replay showed it wasn’t a foul tip. But that was the judgement of the umpiring crew and McKinstry immediately took advantage, lining an RBI single to center to tie the game. That got Pérez to third, and McKinstry promptly swiped second for his 14th steal of the season. Dillon Dingler got hit by a 1-0 fastball to load the bases, and suddenly the whole tenor of the inning was tilting in the Tigers’ favor. Parker Meadows got into a 2-2 count, but Castillo punched him out with a high fastball. Still it was a tie game, and Castillo’s pitch count had risen to 72.
Skubal started the fifth inning losing an eight pitch battle to Solano, but walked him as he just couldn’t find his rhythm consistently. The Tigers ace was pacing the mound and barking at himself by this point, frustrated with his inability to fully lock in. He fell behind Moore 2-0 but got him on a line out to Riley Greene in left. Ben Williamson pulled a weak grounder down the line to a charging McKinstry and the recently minted All-Star unleashed a really good throw to first base to get Williamson by a step. That was a really fine play, but again Skubal fell behind 2-0, this time to Crawford, and the shortstop lined an RBI single to left for a 2-1 lead. A 1-2 changeup then hung up belt high over the middle, and Julio Rodriguez crushed it to left center for a two-run shot and a 4-1 lead.
Skubal nearly threw a slider to the backstop with Raleigh at the plate, and then missed with a changeup too. A pair of high fastballs drew whiffs and Skubal finished him swinging over a changeup, but this was definitely not prime Skubal.
5.0 IP, 4 ER, 4 H, 2 BB, 5 K with 54 of 87 pitches for strikes. For most pitchers that’s a solid ratio, but not for Tarik Skubal.
It was prime Luis Castillo, however, and he went through Báez, Keith, and Torres easily in the bottom of the fifth.
For only the third time this year, A.J. Hinch pulled Skubal after five innings. He was struggling to locate anyway and was only going to get another inning. I wouldn’t mind Tarik taking the All-Star break off entirely, but we’ll see if he ends up handling the first inning of the All-Star game on Tuesday.
Brenan Hanifee handled the sixth without issue and the Tigers got down to the business of catching up.
With Castillo also out of the game, and Eduard Bazardo taking over, Wenceel Pérez led off with a single and then swiped second base. The throw from Mitch Garver went into center field and Pérez hustled to third base once he realized. Riley Greene then smoked a triple to center field to make it 4-2 Mariners.
Torkelson nearly hit it out to left but it dropped just short into Randy Arozarena’s glove. Greene tagged and scored to make it 4-3. Zach McKinstry drew a walk, but Dillon Dingler flew out to Rodriguez in center field. McKinstry promptly stole second for his 15th of the season, and it was up to Parker Meadows. Meadows got a 2-0 count, then took a meatball of a slider for a strike and fouled off one on the inner edge. A front hip sinker froze him for strike three as the center fielder’s struggles continue.
Still, the Tigers had trimmed the lead to one run. Hanifee got the first two outs of the seventh, and Tyler Holton came on to get J.P. Crawford for a quick 1-2-3 inning. Unfortunately, Bazardo returned serve with a 1-2-3 frame of his own.
Holton got Rodriguez on a ground out, but Raleigh was up next and got ahead 2-0. A pair of well located pitches on the outer edge evened the count, but Dingler called for a changeup in the exact same spot and Raleigh muscled it the opposite way for his 37th home run of the season. Holton struck out Arozarena and popped out Garver, but now it was 5-3 Mariners.
Manager Dan Wilson turned to lefty Gabe Speier in the bottom of the eighth, so Jahmai Jones pinch-hit for Pérez and flew out to center. Greene ripped a liner right to Polance at second base, and Torkelson lifted a fly ball to right for the final out.
I love Dan Dickerson, but he continually thought the wind was knocking all these fly balls down. In reality, none of them was even hit that hard. Jones’ ball to center was 102 mph off the bat for example. Hard hit? Sure, but not remotely crushed. Torkelson’s ball to the pull field in the sixth was the only one that might have gotten out under normal wind conditions.
Carlos Hernandez took over in the top of the ninth, and Polanco and Solano slapped a pair of ground balls through the infield for singles. Hernandez got jobbed on first pitch at the bottom of the zone to Luke Raley, but then missed wildly three times to load the bases. Williamson singled in two runs, and Hinch turned to Brant Hurter instead. Probably could’ve just let Hernandez wear this one, but with the All-Star break coming and down three, I suppose it was worth trying to keep the game slightly within reach, futile as that seemed.
Crawford slapped a routine grounder to second but Torres rushed hoping to go home with it and just whiffed on it. That scored two, and Hurter walked Rodriguez as this one spiraled completely out of hand. Raleigh crushed a grand slam to left to add insult to injury.
This was the worst loss of the season, and emphasized the need for major reinforcements for the bullpen as we head to the All-Star break. Skubal had a lousy day, but the Tigers still have just one reliever you can really have a ton of confidence in holding a late lead. The Mariners offense is pretty average apart from Raleigh, and they had no trouble mauling the Tigers middle relievers, Hanifee excluded.
Hurter went on to walk Arozarena. He struck out Garve and then gave up a single to Miles Mastrobuoni. Hinch waved the white flag and let Jake Rogers finish the game.
Bleh. They all only count as one, the equivalent to a really bad series or two in a football game, but we haven’t seen the Tigers get beat down like this more than a couple of times this season.