CLEVELAND — The last time Tarik Skubal walked off the mound, he slumped onto the bench in the visitors’ dugout at Progressive Field and put his head in his hands. He had just given up a three-run sixth inning to the Guardians with a series of uncharacteristic miscues, from an ill-advised snap throw between his legs and over first base to a run-scoring wild pitch to just the second balk of his career. He had also struck David Fry with a 99 mph fastball as he had squared to bunt, and it understandably rattled him.
Lost in his undoing that night was that he was throwing some of his best stuff of the season, in his last start of the regular season.
“I think my average [fastball] velo was up a mile and a half,” Skubal said, “so I’ll let that say what it needs to say. Instead of me saying, ‘Oh, I’m good,’ I’m going to let my performance say that.”
Skubal’s velocity was up across his arsenal. His fastball that night averaged 99 mph, up from his season average of 97.6. His slowest fastball was 97.2. It was his hardest average fastball of the season. His previous high was 98.5 mph … from his previous outing against the Guardians five days earlier.
Stuffwise, Skubal is peaking at the home stretch of the season, a time when the games matter most but when many pitchers are striving to just keep the stuff they’ve been throwing during the year. Also, Skubal is peaking against a team that has seen the best from him over the past 12 months.
“This is why you play the game. This is what you prepare for,” he said over the weekend. “This is why you do all the stuff in the offseason that you do. It’s why you spend the last seven months taking care of yourself daily, don’t let your routine really change, stay grinding and try to get better each and every day, to go out there and perform and just leave it all out there on the field. At the end of the day, that’s all I can really control: do the best of my ability to win the game. It’s literally why I prepare the way I do.”
It’s a moment forever etched in Cleveland sports memory. And while Skubal has never played it up as motivation for this season, it helped push him to build off of what he accomplished last year.
“Right when the season ended, I got right back in the weight room and got back to it,” he said. “I’m not really satisfied with anything but a championship. I don’t really care about individual awards and me being good. I think helping the team win a lot of games, that’s where I put the value in, just making sure that I take care of myself and then I’m ready to go when I’m out there.”
Skubal’s first meeting with the Guardians this season ended with a 102.6 mph fastball — the fastest pitch thrown by a Tiger since Statcast began tracking in 2015, and the fastest strikeout pitch thrown by a Major League starter since pitch tracking began in 2008 — to complete a two-hit shutout with his 13th strikeout. Their next meeting, six weeks later in Cleveland, featured 10 strikeouts over seven scoreless innings.
Skubal is not the first Detroit ace to have a rivalry with his AL Central neighbor. Cleveland seemed to have Justin Verlander’s number for seasons during his Tigers tenure, to the point that he once worried about tipping his pitches. Verlander’s 24 wins against Cleveland match his most against any opponent, but his 25 losses are by far his most against any foe.
This is different, in part because Skubal has been so consistently impressive against Cleveland, even in defeat. As he explained last week, there’s mutual respect, partly because the teams are so similar, as are the cities.
“I enjoy pitching here,” Skubal said. “The environment’s great. You talk about postseason baseball and the noise and kind of the chaos and then the rowdiness. I think this place kind of embodies all of that, so I enjoy playing here.”
