A day after Jared Goff was perfect on Monday Night Football — the Detroit Lions quarterback went 18-for-18 with a pair of touchdown passes — Tarik Skubal was simply very good, though that was enough for the Tigers to win the opener of their best-of-three Wild Card series against the Houston Astros. In a game the team probably needed to win — losing with their ace on the mound would have put the Cinderella club squarely behind the eight ball — Skubal threw six scoreless innings to help lead Detroit to a 3-1 win. He obviously didn’t do it alone.
A.J. Hinch’s mix-and-match bullpen threw the most innings in the majors this season, and they sealed the deal against a normally potent Houston lineup. The unheralded yet talented quartet of Will Vest, Tyler Holton, Jason Foley, and Beau Brieske combined to hold the lead — albeit not without a white-knuckle scare in the ninth.
As for Detroit’s hitters, they didn’t exactly knock down the fences, but they scored enough to support the hurlers. The first two innings set the tone and went a long way toward deciding the contest. Skubal needed just five pitches (all strikes) in the first inning, and only 10 more in the second. Meanwhile, Houston starter Framber Valdez followed a smooth first frame with a tumultuous second that required 29 pitches.
An aggressive at-bat by the eight-hole hitter started the scoring, and a subsequent pair of singles completed the damage. With two on and two out, Tigers catcher Jake Rogers singled on a 3-0 count — the first time all season he’d recorded a hit when ahead 3-0 — to score Wenceel Pérez. That was followed by a run-scoring knock by rookie shortstop Trey Sweeney before Matt Vierling singled in another run. That made it 3-0 Tigers, and with Skubal on the mound, the Astros faced a tall hill to climb.
Notable when it comes to the three straight two-out hits is how the players who delivered them became Tigers. Per MLB Network’s Jon Morosi, Detroit’s 26-man Wild Card roster doesn’t have any players who were acquired via major league free agency (the Astros have five), and the RBI producers were all trade acquisitions: Rodgers was acquired from the Astros in the August 2017 deal that sent Justin Verlander to Houston; Sweeney was acquired from the Dodgers along with well-regarded prospect Thayron Liranzo at this year’s trade deadline in exchange for Jack Flaherty; Vierling was brought on board prior to last season in the deal that sent Gregory Soto to Philadelphia.
The Astros finally made Skubal — Detroit’s ninth-round pick in the 2018 draft — work hard in the bottom of fourth. A Yordan Alvarez leadoff single was followed by an Alex Bregman fly out on the ninth pitch of the at-bat, and then Yainer Diaz drew a walk on the same number of pitches, putting two runners on board. This year’s Cy Young favorite was undaunted. Reaching back for a little extra, Skubal fanned Jeremy Peña and Victor Caratini.
The sixth inning saw Skubal give up a line drive to Bregman that just missed going out for a solo home run, and it also produced a second health concern. He’d earlier taken a come-backer off his glove hand that prompted a visit from a trainer, and this time he appeared to tweak something while throwing a pitch; Hinch said after the game that he was dealing with cramps. Skubal stayed in the game, although only to finish the inning. When the seventh inning came around, he was replaced by Vest. What followed were two clean innings, with Vest (five) and Holton (one) retiring all six Astros they faced.
Then came a ninth inning that had Tigers fans reaching for antacids (and perhaps alcoholic beverages). Foley allowed hits to the first three batters he faced, making the score 3-1. Peña then sacrificed the runners to second and third — reasonable strategy with no one out? — at which point Hinch went to his bullpen again for Brieske, whose résumé includes all of three saves. A fly out followed, and then a walk to load the bases for Jason Heyward. With Minute Maid Park abuzz and a nervous crowd on the edge of their seats in a Comerica Park watch party, Heyward scorched a line drive directly at first baseman Spencer Torkelson. Off the bat, it looked like doom for Detroit; instead, it was the final out. Somehow, the Tigers had survived.
First pitch of Game 2 is set for 2:32 pm ET tomorrow, with Hunter Brown taking the mound for Houston; Holton will open for Detroit, part of the “pitching chaos” that Hinch promised would follow Skubal earlier this week.
