NEW YORK – Tarik Skubal grew up in Arizona, pitched collegiately in the Pacific Northwest and has pitched in all sorts of conditions as a Tiger. Pitching in the heat is not going to aggravate him. Still, Skubal tends to sweat through jerseys quickly, prompting clubhouse manager Dan Ross to leave extras available for him to change through as his game goes on.
Usually, Skubal heads into a summer game with three jerseys on hand, and he’ll change every other inning while the clubhouse staff runs the old jersey through the dryer. On Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium, with a heat advisory looming around New York, the Tigers had four Skubal jerseys ready just in case.
If Skubal needed them, it wasn’t for any heat the Yankees were putting on him. He finished with nine strikeouts and allowed two runs (one earned) over six strong innings in the Tigers’ 9-3 win.
For a brief moment, as Ben Rice’s first-inning drive cleared the fence in right-center field, the Yankees seemed poised to repeat the three-homer barrage they put on Skubal last Wednesday at Comerica Park. Then Skubal settled down, retiring his next 13 batters and striking out nine of them before a hit-by-pitch and a ground ball under shortstop Zach McKinstry’s glove for an error led to an unearned run in the sixth.
It was a masterful bit of revenge for the two-time reigning American League Cy Young Award winner, and it held up his end of what was expected to be a pitching duel opposite Yankees ace Cam Schlittler. Four Tigers home runs off Schlittler, two from Riley Greene, turned the potential duel into a runaway.
Skubal built up into his outing. Rice’s home run came on a 95 mph fastball. Skubal quickly ramped up, reaching back for a 98 mph heater to fan Ali Sánchez in the third inning. That started him on a five-batter strikeout streak that included four different strikeout pitches. Paul Goldschmidt, who homered twice off Skubal last week, fanned on a changeup to end the third. Amed Rosario fanned on a slider leading off the fourth. Skubal flipped a curveball into the zone for a called third strike to Rice, then fired a 99 mph fastball past Jasson Domínguez.
Skubal racked up 13 whiffs over 46 swings – four each on his fastball and his changeup – to go with 15 called strikes. Just as impressively, he consistently worked ahead in counts, delivering a first-pitch strike to 17 of 20 batters.
Skubal and fellow Tigers All-Star pitcher Casey Mize quieted the Yankees over the first two games of this series, combining for 19 strikeouts and no walks over 13 innings with just two hits allowed.