Minneapolis – The Tigers aren’t panicking, not this early in the season. But they aren’t having much fun, either.
“Losing sucks,” Spencer Torkelson said before the Tigers lost their third straight and second in a row to the division-rival Twins 4-2 Tuesday at Target Field. “You can tell yourself it’s early, just keep going. But we want to win. This is a results-driven industry and we understand that.”
The loss is the Tigers’ sixth straight on the road and the second straight with ace Tarik Skubal starting.
Unlike his previous loss, when he pitched seven strong innings in Phoenix, Skubal seemed to be walking the highwire from the start on another chilly night in Minneapolis.
“He pitched under stress pretty much the whole game,” manager AJ Hinch said. “There were multiple guys on the bases and they spoiled some two-strike pitches, continued some at-bats and won some big at-bats. Credit them for having a good approach.”
Skubal stranded runners at the corners with one out in the second. He stranded a runner at third in the third inning. He pitched around an error and a single in the fourth.
In the fifth, with no safety net in a scoreless game, he lost his balance and fell off the wire.
“I thought my stuff was good,” said Skubal ended up throwing 95 pitches in less than five innings. “I felt like I had a lot of swing and miss (19 whiffs on 51 swings with seven strikeouts). But, I didn’t put it together when I needed to get some swing and miss and get out of innings. And obviously the two walks. That can’t happen.”
Yep, it always seems to start with a walk. He walked Byron Buxton to start the fifth after he got ahead 0-2. It was the first walk he’d allowed in 18 innings this season.
BOX SCORE: Twins 4, Tigers 2
He followed that up with another walk, losing Austin Martin after he’d gotten ahead 1-2.
“Those mistakes can’t happen,” he said.
Luke Keaschall broke the scoreless tie, ripping an RBI single on an 0-1 changeup.
Skubal got ahead of Ryan Jeffers 0-2 and couldn’t put him away. Jeffers lined a two-run, opposite-field double on a 91-mph slider that was outside the strike zone.
“I didn’t think that was hit incredibly hard,” Skubal said. “That’s just part of the game that’s a little unlucky. But the two walks weren’t unlucky. That’s self-inflicted damage and something I need to clean up.”
After Victor Caratini struck out for the second out, Skubal got ahead of Josh Bell 0-2.
Same story. Skubal threw a changeup above the zone and Bell lashed it for a double to left, ending Skubal’s night.
“Just bigger misses in two-strike counts than normal for me,” he said. “That’s something I can clean up pretty easily. But in the moment, I didn’t execute some pitches when I needed to.”
Entering the game, hitters were 1-for-14 against his changeup. The Twins got three hits off it in five innings.
It was Skubal’s shortest outing, not counting his injury-shortened start in Miami last September, since Aug. 8 last year when the Angels KO’d him in the fifth at Comerica Park.
The Tigers are now 2-7 in Skubal’s starts at Target Field.
But he does not carry the burden of this loss alone. It was another too-little-too-late offensive performance.
Going into the fifth inning Tuesday, Skubal had posted 10 straight scoreless innings. And the Tigers hitters also went scoreless in those 10 innings.
“Obviously, you want to pitch with a big lead like we did on Opening Day,” he said. “That’d be ideal. But that’s not the reality of the game and you can’t let that stuff impact you on the mound. You get in a rhythm. And my job is to get our team in the dugout to hit.”
They had an early chance to nick Twins’ starter Taj Bradley in the second inning. Zach McKinstry doubled and Torkelson singled with one out. But Bradley struck out Parker Meadows, and after he hit Javier Baez in the back to load the bases, Colt Keith grounded out to second.
“That’s always been a part of baseball,” said rookie Kevin McGonigle, who drove in both Tigers’ runs. “You fall down early and everybody’s got to put good at-bats together and keep passing the stick to the guy behind them. We will be good. No one is worried about that. Everyone is in a good spot.”
Bradley, throwing dastardly 90-mph splitters off 96-mph heaters, only allowed one other runner into scoring position through the sixth and ended up striking out 10.
“There’s a lot of power in his stuff,” Hinch said. “And he’s pitching with a lot of confidence. He got swing-and-miss and kept the ball on the ground, especially when we had our big opportunity.”
The Tigers, to their credit, continued to scratch and claw, putting runners in scoring position in the final three innings and bringing the tying run to the plate in the eighth and ninth.
“That’s this clubhouse,” McGonigle said. “We’re never out of it. We’re always going to fight until the last pitch of the game.”
Torkelson and Meadows started the seventh with singles to knock Bradley out of the game. And, against lefty reliever Taylor Rogers, and McGonigle lined a two-out RBI single.
In the eighth, reliever Cole Sands walked McKinstry and Torkelson with two outs and Hinch used his trump card. He sent up lefty slugger Kerry Carpenter to bat for Parker Meadows.
Carpenter was scratched on Monday and didn’t start Tuesday because of a stomach virus.
“I felt good about getting Carp in the game there,” Hinch said. “It was our one chance to have a big swing to tie the game.”
Twins manager Derek Shelton, who was out of left-handed relievers, countered with the next best thing. Right-hander Eric Orze’s splitter, a platoon neutralizer, has held lefties hitless this season (0 for 8) and held them to a .217 average last year.
“We knew they were going to go to Orze and bring in the split,” Hinch said. “But Carp is one of our best to hit the ball out of the ballpark. Using Carp, that was just trying to get a jolt and get us back into it.”
No jolt. Orze punched out Carpenter with a 1-2 splitter at the bottom of the zone.
McGonigle struck again in the ninth. After Baez doubled off Orze, McGonigle golfed a breaking ball that nearly hit the plate into the right-field corner for an RBI double.
“I was just up there battling, giving it all I had to put the ball in play and get on base,” McGonigle said. “Just trying to put bat on ball. If I foul it off, it’s a win. If it’s a hit, it’s a win. If I ground out, that’s not great. But I was able to get to the bottom of the ball and I’m happy about that.”
Shelton summoned right-hander Justin Topa who snuffed out the rally, though he walked Riley Greene with two outs before getting Dillon Dingler to ground out.
“We had 12 left on base,” Hinch said. “We created a lot of opportunities of our own and made them go through a lot of pitchers (four relievers) at the end. We have two more games still in this series where that can help us out.”
The Tigers fall to 4-7.
“If you look at our at-bats, we’re starting to string some good ones together,” Torkelson said. “We’ve had some hard-hit balls put in play and we’re getting our walks. I feel like it’s just one swing away from cracking it open for everybody.”
Chris.McCosky@detroitnews.com
@cmccosky
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Tarik Skubal doesn’t finish fifth inning in Tigers’ loss to Twins
Reporting by Chris McCosky, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
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