CLEVELAND — Tarik Skubal broke a camera. Then he broke the curse.
The former was the victim of a 100 mph fastball from Skubal that Guardians speedster Angel Martínez fouled back and off the backstop, where ESPN had a camera installed. The sound of the lens shattering, then the kerplunk of metal on metal, had Skubal looking and pointing as the umps halted the game for the crew to clean up the debris.
“That was interesting,” catcher Dillon Dingler said. “I didn’t really process it in the moment until Skub looked at it. I don’t know if you saw his face, but he was like, ‘Oh my God.’ I looked around, and it was shattered.”
Said Skubal: ““I told [Martínez], ‘Dude, try to do it again.’”
It was the most solid contact the Guardians made on Skubal all day Tuesday during Detroit’s 2-1 win in Game 1 of the AL WIld Card Series.
The latter, the curse, was the feeling of two weeks of frustration the Tigers had endured playing against the Guardians, who caught up with and passed them for the AL Central title in part by winning five of six games against them over the final 12 days of the regular season, including two victories against Skubal. The Tigers are here at Progressive Field, playing a Wild Card Series on the road, because of the Guards.
The Tigers are a win away from getting the best revenge on Cleveland and advancing to the Division Series because of Skubal, who delivered one of the most dominant performances in Tigers postseason history. In the process, he delivered the Tigers their swagger back after it seemed lost for good upon leaving Cleveland last week.
“Tarik set an incredible tone for us,” manager A.J. Hinch said, “He’s been incredible all season, but what a performance at the biggest moments on the biggest stage to get us in a great position to win the game.”
The last time Skubal had taken the mound at Progressive Field, he left with head in hands, having been chased by two unearned runs scored partly thanks to a series of uncharacteristic Skubal miscues. That was last Tuesday, when Gavin Williams outpitched him and the Guardians drew even with the Tigers atop the AL Central, never to relinquish the lead.
“It doesn’t really matter how we got here. We got in,” Skubal said. “Everybody’s in the same boat. And we’re up, 1-0, in a best-of-three.”
Skubal’s fastball reached 100 mph in the first inning against longtime nemesis José Ramírez, and he flirted with triple digits the rest of the afternoon. He threw 11 of his 107 pitches at 100 mph or harder, all faster than any pitch he threw during last year’s postseason.
His fastball averaged 99.1 mph, just faster than his 99.0 average here last Tuesday, and a half-tick up from his average two weeks ago against the Guardians at Comerica Park. But it was more than just heat: Skubal’s changeup drew 12 whiffs on 16 swings, and his slider buckled Cleveland hitters for six of 16 called strikes.
“He had everything,” Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said. “That’s what big-time pitchers do.”
Skubal had struck out four of Cleveland’s first eight batters and allowed a lone hit through three innings when Martínez followed up his camera-shattering foul ball with a dribbler just to Skubal’s left for a leadoff single in the fourth. Three batters later, Gabriel Arias hit a chopper over Skubal’s head that allowed Martínez to round third and beat Skubal’s throw home with a slide around Dingler’s leg.
“I wouldn’t say deja vu,” Dingler said. “Our energy was up the entire day in the dugout. It didn’t feel like the past few weeks. Everybody’s up. Everybody wants to push runs across because we know we have Skub out there. It feels different.”
Not even Justin Verlander had this level of performance: Skubal’s 14 strikeouts over 7 2/3 innings topped his career high when he shut out these Guardians on May 25 at Comerica Park. He also tied the Tigers’ single-game postseason record set by Joe Coleman in Game 3 of the 1972 ALCS, and became the 14th MLB pitcher to fan 14 in a postseason start, last done by Gerrit Cole for Hinch’s Astros in the 2019 ALDS.
The outing was so dominant that Hinch, never a fan of bunts, had Zach McKinstry bunt the go-ahead run home in the seventh inning, one of two unearned runs the Tigers recorded on Williams during his six-plus-inning, eight-strikeout performance.
“What an unbelievably pitched game we got to watch,” Vogt marveled.
