Tigers 3, Twins 0: Happy Skubalday, everybody!

Tarik Skubal was magnificent. But you already knew this.

In the finale and rubber match of a three-game weekend series against the Twins in Detroit, and in front of a national TV audience and a standing-room-only crowd on Sunday night, a magnificent starting pitching performance dominated the evening’s proceedings as the Detroit Tigers beat the Twins 3-0.

Your defending American League Cy Young Award winner, Tarik Skubal, made his 17th start for the Tigers this year. His last pair of outings have been somewhat un-Skubalish, coughing up four runs against the A’s in his previous start; the one before that saw him walk three (!!!) Pirates in 5 ⅔ innings. Regardless, coming into tonight’s tilt he and the Tigers gained the victory in his last four starts, and as Vince Lombardi once opined, “Something something winning is pretty good.”

Facing Skubal for the Minnesotans was Chris Paddack, a tall, right-handed Texan in his second full-ish season for the Twins. On June 1 he struck out ten Mariners in eight innings, but two starts later (on a Friday the 13th, ooooh) in Houston he surrendered nine runs in four innings. In a typical start he’ll give you five innings, allow a couple of runs, and whiff a little less than a batter an inning — he won’t dominate you, but he usually limits the damage.

Kerry Carpenter decided he wanted to be responsible for the first run Paddack would allow on this night, with a solo home run to right and a 1-0 lead.

Meanwhile, Skubal was absolutely mowing down Twins hitters early on: he struck out the first batter he faced, got Ryan Jeffers to fly out, then got the next seven batters out, all swinging, six of which struck out on changeups which were tying everyone up in knots. Skubal was “shoving,” in the parlance of our times.

Byron Buxton, who led off the fourth, snapped the consecutive-strikeouts streak with a flyout to left, but then Jeffers struck out for the ninth whiff of the night to that point.

In the bottom of the fourth Riley Greene, like Carpenter before him, turned a changeup around and deposited it into the right-field seats for a 2-0 lead.

Ty France dropped a single into right-centre with one out in the fifth for the first Minnesota baserunner of the day, and the fans heartily thanked Skubal for his 13 consecutive retired batters to start the game. What did our team’s starting pitcher do next? He struck out Harrison Bader and Brooks Lee to end the inning, of course; Lee was the eleventh strikeout to that point, and all eleven were swinging strikeouts.

With two outs and Colt Keith on first in the bottom of the fifth, Carpenter hit a triple to right to score Keith for a 3-0 lead… but while running, Carpenter appeared to reaggravate his tweaked hamstring and he came out of the game. He protested a bit and tried to stay in the game but I assume AJ Hinch is being particularly cautious with Carpenter these days.

Skubal’s final line: 7 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 13 K, 67 of 93 pitches for strikes, and his final pitch of the night was a 99.7 mph (160.5 km h⁻¹) fastball for a called strike three on France. I’m starting to think this fellow is quite a good pitcher.

Tommy Kahnle took over for Skubal in the eighth, and after Harrison Bader squiggled an infield single down the third-base line, Lee grounded into a delightful 3-6-3 double play.

That’s a big play in a close game; Spencer Torkelson’s defence at first base has been greatly improved this year, I must say.

Will Vest came on for the top of the ninth to close out the win, which he did in a delightfully uneventful way. That was the Tigers’ 53rd win of the season against only 32 defeats, good for an 11 ½-game lead in the American League Central; Detroit has an off-day on Monday before starting a road trip in Washington.

Final score: Tigers 3, Twins 0

That’s Some Mighty Fine Company

Observations and Occurrences

• This was the first Sunday Night Baseball game in Detroit since May, 2017. Since this was an ESPN game, MLB’s normal video-clip library didn’t have clips of game action. Apologies for using Twitter clips.
• In the GameThread, Bird#20 relayed the fact that, 49 years and a day previous to this game, Mark Fidrych beat the Yankees on national television.
• I took a look at that 2017 Tigers roster, and those names are quite the blast from the past. Bruce Rondón, Artie Lewicki, and the very-forgettable Matt den Dekker!
• (Matt’s a big BYB fan, though. Never misses an article. Shout out to ya, Matty-Double-D.)
• On this day in 1922, France donated one square kilometre of land to Canada in perpetuity on the site of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. That was an important victory in World War I for the Allies against the Germans to take a prominent position overlooking the plains of northern France, and was a formative moment in Canadian history. The memorial tower and statues were finished in 1936; I’ve been to that site and it was a very powerful and moving experience.