Facing Skubal in a winner-take-all postseason game is daunting. But the Mariners have been his kryptonite. They’ve won all three times they’ve faced the Detroit ace in 2025, including Game 2 of the ALDS.
Can Seattle’s lineup find a way to do the improbable and get to Skubal for a fourth time in a single year, or will Skubal be lights-out with an American League Championship Series berth on the line?
Here are three keys that will decide whether Skubal wins Game 5, or the Mariners do:
1) Can the Mariners keep punishing Skubal’s (few) mistakes?
The simplest reason the Mariners have been able to beat Skubal is: They’ve hit home runs off him.
The Mariners have homered off Skubal in all three games they’ve faced him this season — four times total — including twice in Game 2, when Jorge Polanco’s two solo home runs were the only runs they got off the Tigers ace. No team has hit more home runs off Skubal this season.
And the reason the Mariners have been able to hit home runs off Skubal is that they’ve jumped on his few mistake pitches.
All of their home runs have been off pitches Skubal left in the heart of the strike zone: a hanging slider to Dylan Moore on April 2, a hanging changeup to Julio Rodríguez on July 11, another hanging slider and sinker right down the middle to Polanco in Game 2.
That’s your only chance to do damage against Skubal. Even when he leaves the ball in the heart of the zone (more than one baseball’s width inside the strike zone, by Statcast’s definition), he’s still one of the best pitchers in baseball. But once you get to the edges of the zone and beyond, he is by far the best pitcher in baseball.
And this is something the Mariners are good at. Seattle has hit 162 home runs this season against pitches in the heart of the zone, tied for the fourth-most of any team. Only the Yankees, Dodgers and Phillies, all powerhouse offenses, have hit more.
The counterpoint is that Skubal, even in the heart of the zone, is extremely hard to hit. He dominates the zone. He’s generated 144 whiffs on pitches in the heart of the zone this season, more than any other pitcher, and induced a swing-and-miss rate of nearly 20% on heart-of-zone pitches, one of the highest in the league. So the Mariners will have their work cut out for them to even hit those pitches, let alone hit them out of the ballpark.
2) What can Raleigh and Polanco do from the right side?
The Mariners have two big switch-hitters in their lineup in Raleigh, with his 61 home runs and counting, and the resurgent Polanco.
Both of them have made huge strides from the right side of the plate this season, which matters a lot when you have to face the toughest left-handed pitcher in the Majors.
But Skubal’s not just any lefty. He’s the lefty. And Raleigh, the Mariners’ best hitter, hasn’t solved him even in Seattle’s wins. In their showdowns, MVP candidate vs. Cy Young candidate, Raleigh is 1-for-9 with five strikeouts and an insane 73% swing-and-miss rate (16 whiffs on 22 swings vs. Skubal). Skubal has had Raleigh’s number, and that could be a big factor in Game 5.
Polanco, on the other hand? He’s seen Skubal shockingly well. It’s not just the pair of huge playoff homers. Polanco hasn’t swung and missed a single time against Skubal this year. He has zero whiffs on 12 swings, and zero K’s in five at-bats.
Skubal has gotten 550 whiffs this season, more than any other pitcher. But he hasn’t gotten Polanco, and that makes Polanco an X-factor.
3) Will Skubal’s underlying dominance bring back dominant results?
Skubal’s “zero wins against the Mariners” hasn’t really been as bad as it looks. He’s been better against them than his results show.
First of all, Skubal has induced a 36% swing-and-miss rate against the Mariners in his three starts, which is his fifth-best mark against any one opponent. He’s also running a 30% strikeout rate against them, which is basically an elite-level K rate. Even in Game 2, his stat line was seven innings, two runs, nine K’s — the Mariners had to scratch and claw to win the game.
And Skubal’s expected wOBA vs. the Mariners — that’s Statcast’s overall measurement of a pitcher’s quality of contact allowed — was just .283. Which is a little higher than usual for Skubal, sure (his season xwOBA, including the playoffs, is .260) … but if Skubal’s xwOBA just vs. the Mariners was his xwOBA for the entire 2025 season, he’d still be a top-10 starter in the Majors.
So we can easily see Skubal racking up strikeouts and shutting down the Mariners in Game 5 to send the Tigers to the ALCS. But the Mariners just might have one more win in them, too, if things break right.
