Atlanta – Nobody was looking for scapegoats or sympathy. Nobody was sounding alarms.
But the Tigers took another body blow Wednesday night. Matt Olson sent a middle-middle cutter from Kenley Jansen on a line into the bullpen in right-center, a two-run, walk-off home run that gave the winningest team in baseball, the Atlanta Braves, a 4-3 win at Truist Park.
“It’s always tough when you lose a game like that,” Gleyber Torres said. “As a team, we have to continue to push it. Nobody is going to feel sorry for us. We need to stay together and be ready for tomorrow.”
It was the second time on this two-city road trip the Tigers have been walked off with ninth-inning home runs off Jansen, the game’s active saves leader. Until those two losses, the Tigers had been 10-0 when leading after eight innings.
“It’s a loss and then we play again in 12 hours,” said manager AJ Hinch when asked about the toll these types of losses can take. “We’re tough enough to handle the ups and downs of a season. It’s a tough loss. We were in a position to win and we didn’t. … But the toll it takes is that it’s a loss and we’ve got to get to tomorrow.”
The Tigers were in a position to win because reigning two-time Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal locked up the Braves offense for seven impressive innings, boosted by some sterling defensive play.
“Skubal threw a really good game,” Torres said. “It is what it is. Tomorrow is another game, just try to finish strong in Atlanta and don’t think too much about tonight. Turn the page and look forward.”
Skubal left a four-seam fastball over the plate to Ozzie Albies with one on in the first inning. But that two-run homer was all the damage he allowed.
“It looked like he got better as the game went on,” Hinch said. “It looked like his stuff got a little better and his execution got a little better and we really played good defense. It’s what you need to do behind Tarik. This is a high-contact team and you’ve got to make plays and we did.
“He put us in a position to win.”
Skubal gave a hat-tip to catcher Dillon Dingler for adjusting the attack plan after that first inning.
BOX SCORE: Braves 4, Tigers 3
“The first time through I got hit hard, that’s baseball, you’ve got to make adjustments,” said Skubal, who struck out seven and got nine ground ball outs. “Ding called a great game and we audibled and got them off the heater. Then we were able to reestablish the heater in the seventh and got a ton of miss.”
The bottom of the seventh started with a scare. After throwing a 96-mph sinker to Olson, who was leading off the inning, Skubal, took off his glove and started shaking out his arm and rubbing his forearm. Hinch and trainer Kelly Rhoades came out to check.
“I don’t really know how to explain it,” Skubal said. “I just needed a little bit of time. Whatever happened, I just needed a little bit of time and the symptoms I experienced on that one throw went away. Obviously, I felt better after that.”
He struck out Olson with a 97-mph four-seamer on the next pitch and then proceeded to punch-out Austin Riley and Mauricio Dubon to end the inning and his outing.
The Tigers backed Skubal with a crisply-played defensive game.
Third baseman Colt Keith stopped some early bleeding for Skubal in the first inning, ranging to his left and making a diving stop of a hard ground ball and throwing out Olson. It came right after Albies had launched a middle-in four-seamer into the seats.
Keith took a double away from Albies with a slick backhand play over the bag at third and strong throw across the diamond in the sixth. He also started two double-plays.
“I don’t know what was going on with the left side of the infield,” Skubal said. “Colt had two balls that were going left and then just shot to the right. He made some huge plays. The defense picked me up.”
Right-fielder Kerry Carpenter made an exceptional play in the fourth inning, racing into the gap to cut off another hard-hit ball by Olson leading off the fourth. He hustled the ball in, held Olson to a single and Skubal got Riley to bang into a double-play on the next pitch.
“Defensively, we’ve been working hard,” Torres said. “Offensively, we have to figure out a way to be more consistent and create more opportunities.”
The Tigers scored their three runs in the first three innings and managed just one hit the rest of the way.
They created two, two-out runs in the second inning on a double by Wenceel Perez, a walk to Jace Jung and an RBI single by Kevin McGonigle, who extended his MLB-leading on-base streak to 26 games. The second run scored on an errant pickoff move by Braves starter JR Ritchie, who was making his second big-league start.
Riley Greene broke the 2-2 tie in the third inning with his fourth home run.
Ritchie struck him out on three pitches in the first inning, punching him swinging through back-to-back changeups. Ritchie stayed with the changeup when Greene came up again in the third. Except Greene made an adjustment.
He scalded the changeup 417 feet to left-center. The ball left his bat with an exit velocity of 106 mph.
The fun ended right there, though.
The seeds of Olson’s heroics were sown in the eighth. Kyle Finnegan issued a pair of two-out walks before getting out of the inning. Those free bases allowed the Braves lineup to roll back around to the middle of the order where Olson loomed.
Then Jansen walked Albies ahead of Olson.
“The walk leading off is always tough,” Hinch said. “It puts pressure on the running game. It puts pressure on the next pitch. And obviously, Olson is a tremendous player. He’s going to hit mistakes.”
The loss is the Tigers’ 10th straight to the Braves, who are 22-9, and drops them under .500 (15-16).
“I’m just going to go back to trusting the guys we have in this clubhouse and trusting the work we put in and everything we do behind the scenes to go out and play,” Skubal said. “I’m going to trust the competitors we have. These things are going to happen and you’ve got to flush it, especially with a day game coming tomorrow (12:15 p.m.).
“We’ve got to be able to move on and worry about salvaging a game in this series.”
Chris.McCosky@detroitnews.com
@cmccosky
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Tigers’ Skubal sharp, but Jansen allows walk-off homer: ‘Turn the page’
Reporting by Chris McCosky, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
