The leadoff home run off Tarik Skubal on Sunday looked eerily similar to the Tigers left-hander’s Major League debut five days earlier, struck by a middle infielder wearing No. 7 off a fastball over the plate.

The rest of Skubal’s outing looked like the high-strikeout lefty who propelled his way through the farm system last year and dominated Spring Training.

“I think I did a good job of competing a little bit better this time than last and just throwing things with a little bit more intent and more focus,” Skubal said.

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Sunday’s 7-4 Tigers win and series victory was something Detroit hadn’t seen in two years. The Tigers arrived in Cleveland having lost 20 consecutive games to the Indians. They left town with their first series win since September 2018.

“We obviously knew about the whole streak thing,” said Daniel Norris, who earned his second win in relief, “so to break that on Friday and then also take the series today is huge. We're all pretty stoked, for sure.”

Francisco Liriano was the winning pitcher in the rubber match of that three-game series in Cleveland. Skubal was a relatively anonymous ninth-round Draft pick then, having finished his first Minor League season in the bullpen at Class A West Michigan.

Skubal, the Tigers’ fifth-ranked prospect and the No. 50 prospect on MLB Pipeline’s Top 100, didn’t get the win Sunday. Yet, after the Hernandez homer, his 2 1/3 innings were a reminder of why he rose so quickly: Power, poise, pitch mix and strikeouts.

“His fastball's good. It's got some jump to it, some life to it at the end,” manager Ron Gardenhire said. “He's just trying to find himself, get comfortable with this situation, and then everything will go smoothly for him. This guy's got great stuff.”

Five days after Skubal gave up four runs on seven hits over two innings against the White Sox, he had more trouble early. After the leadoff homer, his two-out walk to Carlos Santana extended the opening inning for right-handed slugger Franmil Reyes. Skubal challenged Reyes with fastballs on the inner half of the plate, fanning him on a 97 mph pitch up and in and setting a theme.

After Jordan Luplow doubled off the right-field wall leading off the second inning, Skubal sent down the bottom third of Cleveland’s lineup in order, all swinging at fastballs -- 95 mph at the knees to Domingo Santana, 95 over the plate to Beau Taylor, then 96 off the plate to Greg Allen.

“I just feel like I threw it with more conviction and a little bit more aggressive,” Skubal said. “I didn't try to guide it as much, and that's something I might have fallen into my last start. I just kind of felt that I had a little bit more life on it because I was more aggressive with it.”

Skubal tried hard for another strikeout in the third, battling José Ramírez for a nine-pitch at-bat that included six consecutive foul balls off all four of his pitches. Skubal challenged him with a 96 mph high fastball, but Ramírez hit a hard grounder that bounced off third baseman Isaac Paredes for a one-out single.

“I couldn’t get him to put it in play. And when he did, he hit it really, really hard,” Skubal said. “I made some really good pitches in that sequence. I threw everything I had at him. He kept fouling it off.”

That, Skubal said, is the biggest adjustment: Good hitters can foul off good pitches. Seventeen of his pitches were fouled off Sunday. It’s the same way the Indians wore down Tigers pitchers in their prior series in Detroit.

“And then any mistake, I feel like they hit it hard somewhere,” he said. “But for me, I need to be consistent with every pitch and throw every pitch for strikes and be able to locate out of the zone when I need to locate out of the zone.”

A full-count battle with the next batter, Francisco Lindor, ended when Skubal buried a slider that hit the All-Star shortstop, closing Skubal’s outing at 69 pitches.

Norris ended the threat in three pitches, then delivered three more scoreless innings to earn his second win of the year. For both of them, it was a sign of progress.

“That was the best part of the game really. Our offense came alive after that,” Gardenhire said.

Skubal drew seven swings and misses on 38 fastballs, three more whiffs on the slider and another on his changeup, according to Statcast. He took veteran lefty Matthew Boyd’s approach from Saturday night and adapted it to his repertoire.

“I watched how he competed,” Skubal said. “We are fairly similar in how we attack guys. And I watched his changeup play. He threw a lot of them, a lot of good ones, and that's something that I took away from him: If I can execute this pitch, I might have some success.”

The more Skubal learns and progresses, the deeper into games he’ll go. And the more the Tigers’ young starters progress, the more regularly they’ll compete in places like Cleveland.