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However your Sunday night may have gone, consider yourself lucky that you weren’t a Minnesota Twin facing off against Tarik Skubal.
It was the Tigers’ first time hosting ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball” since 2017, when the team was headlined by future Hall of Famer Miguel Cabrera.
In the spotlight, Skubal did not disappoint in front of the sellout crowd.
The reigning AL Cy Young winner mowed down just about every player in his path as he threw seven shutout innings, allowing just one hit, one walk and striking out 13 batters in the process.
The lefty flamethrower set the tone immediately in the first inning when he struck out Twins star Byron Buxton on five pitches.
After a flyout, Skubal then found himself in some trouble with a 3-0 count to Carlos Correa.
He proceeded to throw three straight swing-and-miss strikes, and was fired up with a yell, leaving the mound with passion that’d have you thinking it was anything but the first inning.
The lefty ace then struck out the next six batters he faced, making it seven in a row. His first three innings consisted of eight strikeouts on nine batters faced.
Skubal struck out Jeffers on his next time through the Twins order, giving him a punchout against every single Twin in the lineup.
Detroit supported Skubal’s dominance on the mound with solo home runs from Kerry Carpenter and Riley Greene in the first and fourth innings, respectively.
Carpenter later tacked on an RBI triple before exiting the game after reaggravating his nagging hamstring injury.
Tigers manager AJ Hinch pulled Skubal after he painted a 100 mile-per-hour fastball, his 93rd pitch of the night, for strikeout No. 13.
Skubal became the first pitcher in Tigers history with at least 13 strikeouts in a game while allowing no more than one hit, joining Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander as the only Tigers to win 10 consecutive decisions in a season over the past 40 years.
He also joined Randy Johnson, Sandy Koufax and Chris Sale as the only left-handed pitchers to ever have multiple starts in a single season with at least 13 strikeouts, zero runs and two or fewer hits.
The Tigers are currently tied with the Dodgers for the best record in baseball at 53-32 as they’re on the prowl for their first World Series win since 1984.
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