DETROIT -- Tarik Skubal hasn’t had much reason to flash frustration so far this season. But as the reigning American League Cy Young Award winner marched back into the dugout in the seventh inning following Blake Perkins’ game-tying two-run double, he had a moment.
Skubal chucked his glove off the dugout wall, then flipped a mini-cooler onto the floor. A game that seemed entirely under his control a couple innings earlier had turned, and the Brewers’ lineup of pesky, persistent hitters had gotten to him, ending his run of back-to-back wins with four runs on seven hits in six-plus innings.
Skubal was in line for his first loss at Comerica Park last July. So imagine his emotion as home runs from Jahmai Jones and Spencer Torkelson powered the Tigers to a 5-4 walk-off win at Comerica Park.
Two innings after Skubal flipped a cooler in the dugout, Riley Greene and Colt Keith carried a cooler up the dugout steps and onto the field to dump on Torkelson during his postgame TV interview.
“Picked me up big time,” Skubal said. “Anytime you give me a lead, I’m going to try to do my best to win that game. For them to have my back and pick me up in that situation when I gave the lead back away was huge.”
Skubal looked primed for another run at a no-hit bid early, retiring Milwaukee’s first 11 hitters in order with five strikeouts. He needed just 26 pitches, 24 strikes, for his first trip through the Brewers’ lineup, and didn’t reach a two-ball count until Brandon Lockridge leading off the fourth inning.
“He came out hot,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “It’s a hard team to strike out, and he got a bunch of punchouts and swing-and-miss early. They made a really good adjustment and started to lengthen some at-bats.”
Four of Milwaukee’s five batters in the fourth inning reached two-ball counts, including back-to-back seven-pitch battles. Still, Skubal was a strike away from a fourth hitless inning when William Contreras and Gary Sánchez hit back-to-back doubles, the latter a soft line drive just out of reach of a charging Kerry Carpenter in right field.
“That’s a good pitcher, and he comes after you,” Perkins said. “I think we did a good job the second, third time around of making him work a little bit. It’s making him uncomfortable. Like, be annoying. That’s kind of our game sometimes. Especially me right now.”
Skubal regained his rhythm from there, keeping a lead he gained on Riley Greene’s two-run homer in the first inning. The Brewers tried getting Skubal out of sorts with back-to-back bunt singles leading off the sixth inning, but Skubal used the ground ball and a strong Tigers infield to his advantage for a Contreras double play to strand the potential tying run on third.
Skubal took the mound for the seventh inning with his pitch count under control and a two-run lead restored, but a bloop single from Sánchez and a ground ball through the right side from Luis Matos put the tying run back on. Perkins thought about bunting, but Skubal fired a fastball off of his bat as he backed away, putting him in an 0-2 hole. Perkins fouled off back a couple of tough two-strike pitches to keep his at-bat alive for the rare Skubal mistake, a 97 mph fastball that wandered over the plate for Perkins to turn on.
“He didn't hit the ball hard,” Skubal said. “Controlled contact all day, I thought. His ball gets through, just so happens to be where our outfield's not in a position. And that's not a knock on positioning by any means, I'm just saying that we're shifted the other way and it ended up being a double that scores two. It's just baseball. It happens.”
Sánchez and Matos scrambled home as the ball rolled to the left-field fence and Hinch prepared to pull his ace.
Once David Hamilton singled home Perkins with a ground ball off Tyler Holton, Skubal was in line for his first loss since April 7 and his first home defeat since the Mariners got him last July 11. The Tigers had other ideas.
“I thought I executed pitches at a really high clip today,” Skubal said. “I think it was overall a very positive day, even though it ended kind of with a sour taste in my mouth.”