Detroit – The Tigers team that slumped their way home from Minneapolis on a five-game losing streak bore no resemblance to the team that simultaneously celebrated a series sweep and rookie Kevin McGonigle’s first big-league home run Sunday afternoon.
“There can’t be a louder thing to take away from this series,” said Tarik Skubal, who took a no-hitter into the sixth inning and helped the Tigers finish off the Miami Marlins 8-2 before a crowd of 26,768 at Comerica Park. “Just how we responded to not playing good baseball in Minnesota. There were multitude of reasons why but I don’t think we used an excuse.
“We flipped the page, got home and swept a good Miami team.”
BOX SCORE: Tigers 8, Marlins 2
Manager AJ Hinch was also heartened to see his club respond and get back to playing the brand of ball that’s got them to the postseason the last two years.
“I think we are well-defined as a team,” he said. “We can handle a lot. We’ve gone through a lot as a group. I think we’re just very prepared to play every game in its own right. We don’t get too high and we don’t get too low. But we will compete. And we will get as frustrated as everybody else does when you have a series like that in Minnesota.
“But the reality of baseball is, you’re going to have those. It’s how you bounce back that is going to define how long those bad stretches last.”
Being back home proved to be a tonic, as did the warmer temperatures. Certainly there is something about Comerica Park that sparks Skubal.
Last season he was 9-1 with an American League-low 2.13 ERA in 16 starts here. And since the beginning of 2024, he was 19-2, a best-in-baseball .905 winning percentage, with a league-low 2.06 ERA.
All those numbers got better Sunday. In fact, the no-hitter watch was in full effect.
“I’ve been around a lot of them,” Hinch said. “Usually, it’s the one more time through the order that I start to feel it and we were approaching that, getting into the sixth. I wasn’t quite there. … I hadn’t quite gotten to that feeling in your stomach where it could be.
“Although with Tarik, it can happen in any given game.”
Skubal breezed through the first four innings, facing the minimum 12 hitters. He erased a leadoff walk to Austin Slater (foreshadowing) in the fourth by getting Jakob Marsee (Allen Park, Central Michigan) to hit into a 4-6-3 double-play.
He was mixing 96- and 97-mph four-seam fastballs and sinkers with changeups and 90-mph sliders. He got 11 whiffs on 44 swings and 18 called strikes.
Of course, Skubal wasn’t satisfied.
“My changeup needs to be better and it will be better,” he said. “My heaters were good today in terms of execution and my spin was good enough. My changeup needs to be better but in baseball, things like this happen sometimes when you don’t have your best stuff.”
His teammates were feeling the no-hitter vibe, especially after he got the first two outs in the sixth.
“With a guy like that, every time he goes to the mound he’s got a shot to go no-hit,” said McGonigle, who got three hits and raised his average to .322 and his OPS to .920. “The biggest thing for for me, seeing it go into the fifth inning, my mindset is I have to make every play for him. Everyone else is thinking the same thing. We got his back.”
Of course it was Slater who broke it up. He was in camp with the Tigers this spring before exercising his opt-out. He blooped a single to shallow center.
“I immediately looked at our hitting department and said, ‘Which one of you guys worked with him this spring,'” Hinch joked. “Which guy needs to be held accountable for that swing? Now we can laugh about it and tip our cap to him for ruining it.”
Skubal left to a standing ovation with two outs in the seventh, having allowed just the one run on two hits with seven strikeouts.
“Going 6.2 innings is good,” Skubal said. “But where my pitch count was, I should’ve been pitching deeper in the game and maybe just hand it off to one reliever instead of needing two.”
In the last four starts, Skubal, Casey Mize, Keider Montero and Jack Flaherty all pitched at least 5.2 innings and allowed one run or less. No Tigers staff has pulled that off since 2013, a staff that featured three Cy Young winners (Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer and Rick Porcello).
“Pitching and defense, that’s what wins, right,” Skubal said. “Having starters go out and pitch efficiently and keep the game close. If we can get to our bullpen with a lead, we’re going to win a lot of games.”
It was supposed to be an old-school pitching duel between Skubal and Marlins ace Sandy Alcantara. But Dillon Dingler nixed that storyline in the first inning with a 404-foot, two-out, three-run homer on an 0-2, right-on-right changeup that hung in his wheelhouse.
“That two-out rally set the tone for the entire day,” Hinch said. “Going into the game, we thought runs were going to be at a premium for both sides. This is an incredible matchup, a throwback to when starting pitchers are featured. So that three-run first felt huge.”
Alcantara had allowed three runs total in his first three starts. The Tigers put a seven-spot on him in six innings. They collected 12 hits total, with every player in the lineup getting at least one. McGonigle and Kerry Carpenter also bashed home runs off Alcantara.
Carpenter somehow sliced a sweeper into the right-field seats for a two-run shot in the sixth. McGonigle drove a first-pitch 97-mph four-seamer 408 feet into the seats in right in the fifth for his first big-league home run. The ball left his bat at 108.8 mph.
And yes, he got yet another beer shower in the clubhouse afterward.
“I thought it would get a little warmer the second time,” he said. “But it felt a little colder.”
There were also, amidst the soda and water and Gatorade and powder and who knows what all else, a spattering of pickles thrown in.
“It meant everything,” McGonigle said of getting his first homer. “Especially doing it in front of this city. I love this place already and I’m looking forward to a long future here. I can’t believe I was able to do that in front of them.”
McGonigle did retrieve the baseball from the fan who caught it. But it cost him a signed ball, a signed bat and a signed jersey.
“Worth it,” he said.
The Tigers (7-9) will open a three-game series against Central Division rival Kansas City on Tuesday.
“Collectively, you know, the sum of our parts is pretty good,” Hinch said. “Just because you lose a game or two doesn’t mean it defines you. … I trust this team and I believe in this team. It doesn’t shock or surprise me (that they bounced back). And I hope it doesn’t shock or surprise anybody who follows us.”
Chris.McCosky@detroitnews.com
@cmccosky
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Tarik Skubal, Tigers sweep Marlins with pitching-hitting power display
Reporting by Chris McCosky, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
