Detroit — The energy was back at Comerica Park Friday night.
Packed house (41,353) on a gorgeous night with ace lefty Tarik Skubal back on the home mound for the first time since April 23, pitching against the Central Division-leading White Sox, who swept the Tigers in Chicago at the beginning of the month.
“Great night, great crowd, Friday night and what that brings is a ton of emotion in itself,” manager AJ Hinch said. “And usually you can multiply it with Tarik. It’s just a ton of emotion and competitiveness.”
The game did not disappoint.
The Tigers, with a two-out, two-run bloop double by Kerry Carpenter in the bottom of the sixth inning, held on to beat the White Sox, 4-3.
“Big time,” Skubal said. “I pride myself on putting my team in a position to win every game. I didn’t do that tonight but my team picked me up. The bullpen picked me up, putting up some zeros and most importantly, we start the series with a win and we can win a series tomorrow.”
Drew Anderson, got four outs, three strikeouts, and Will Vest put up a zero in the eighth. That left it up to the game’s active saves leader. Kenley Jansen, who had spent 15 days on the injured, had pitched just one inning (Saturday) since May 27.
No worries. Jansen, in 10 pitches, earned his eighth save of the season and No. 484 in his career.
The intensity started with Skubal, though.
He was amped from the start, when he struck out all three batters in the first inning around a solo home run by Randal Grichuk. He was amped when Matt Vierling stole a homer from Edgar Quero in the fourth inning. He was amped when his catcher Dillon Dingler threw a seed to second base to nab Junior Perez trying to steal.
But his emotions spilled over after he struck out Colton Montgomery with the bases loaded to end a labor-intensive fifth inning. He started yelling toward the White Sox dugout and pitcher Mike Vasil, who is out for the season after Tommy John surgery, starting jawing back.
Skubal had to be restrained as he stepped into the Tigers’ dugout.
“I’m a competitive guy and I wear my emotions out there,” Skubal said. “That’s how I play the game. That’s just baseball, a little back and forth. It happens. It’s over with.”
Skubal didn’t want to say who the target of his wrath was, but Vasil knew. He told reporters that Skubal thought he’d been stealing signs from the White Sox dugout.
“Obviously, there was some chirping going on,” Hinch said. “The competition comes out as the weather warms up and the season is well underway. Things like this boil over. It’s all in the competition.”
Hinch conferred with the umpires between innings and the four umpires also conferred. It didn’t appear that Vasil or anybody else was ejected.
“I didn’t want them to elevate it, just based on Tarik going back out there for the next inning,” Hinch said. “I just wanted to make sure they knew. There’s going to be a ball inside or a ball up. I didn’t want it to go any further. I let Jordan (Baker, crew chief) know that things were under control.”
BOX SCORE: Tigers 4, White Sox 3
It was just Skubal being in the fight.
“We’re fighting tooth and nail for every win we can get,” he said. “Obviously, we put ourselves in this position and have to fight our way out of it. It was kind of a perfect storm for all that stuff to happen and for me to react the way I did.”
In his second start after missing five-plus weeks (elbow), he gave up a pair of solo home runs, the second one to Perez. Five of the seven hits he allowed in his 5.2 innings came with two strikes. He did strike out eight, but he left with the Tigers’ down, 3-2.
“That’s the first start I’ve had where I felt like I ran out of gas late in the game,” Skubal said. “And I think that’s great for me in terms of building my volume to where a couple of starts from now I’m healthy and ready to go. But I’m good enough to get guys out in the big leagues and good enough to compete and put our team in a position to win and that’s all that matters.”
Vierling, who has been fighting to find his rhythm at the plate, got the crowd on its feet early.
He spoiled the White Sox opener strategy in the first inning, lining a 408-foot, two-run homer into the visitor’s bullpen off lefty Brandon Eisert, who started the game to go one time through the pack of lefties at the top of the Tigers’ lineup.
The Tigers, though, didn’t do anything against White Sox bulk reliever Erick Fedde until the sixth.
After Dingler (three hits, two runs) singled and Riley Greene walked, Carpenter fought off a cutter above the strike zone and dumped it into short center. Center fielder Tristan Peters, perhaps overzealously, made a diving lunge at the ball. It dropped a foot in front of his glove and bounced by him, allowing Greene to score what ended up being the winning run from first base.
“We’ve had our share of mistakes that other teams have capitalized on,” Hinch said. “It kind of felt good to be on the other side of it. Their guy is trying his best to get to that ball. It’s a huge play if he makes the catch. It’s a huge play for us if he doesn’t and it gets by him.
“Right now, I don’t care what it looks like or how we get there or what it takes.”
Just win.
Chris.McCosky@detroitnews.com
@cmccosky
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Tigers, Skubal battle in comeback win over first-place White Sox
Reporting by Chris McCosky, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
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By Chris McCosky, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
