The Toronto Blue Jays came into Saturday night’s game as the hottest team in baseball; the Detroit Tigers, the exact opposite. But the Tigers had their ace up their sleeve... was it enough to win?
No. It absolutely was not. The bats stayed asleep and some late home runs sealed the victory for the visitors as Toronto won 6-1.
Fresh off paternity leave, Tarik Skubal made his twenty-first start of the year for the Tigers. His start against Texas on July 20 has been Detroit’s lone win in the past however-long-it’s-been;
he went 6 ⅔ innings, giving up one run and striking out eleven. Believe me, if your team needs to stop a losing streak, this is the guy you want on the mound for you.
Facing Skubal was Kevin Gausman. He’s been an exceptionally reliable starting pitcher over the past five seasons; from 2021 through 2024, he’s made 31 starts or more. He doesn’t strike out quite as many as he did a couple of years ago, doesn’t walk too many, and even though he’s a fly-ball pitcher, he generally keeps the ball in the yard.
The first three innings passed by relatively quickly; each starter struck out four and gave up a hit to their opposing catcher (Alejandro Kirk hit a double, Jake Rogers hit a single). Skubal’s changeup was doing its normal disappearing act, and Gausman’s splitter was moving every way you can think of, and some you can’t. Davis Schneider made a sensational diving catch in left to rob Spencer Torkelson of a hit, though.
With one out in the fourth Vlad Guerrero Jr. singled and Bo Bichette doubled, putting runners on second and third. Tyler Heineman, pinch-hitting for Kirk, who was shaken up with a foul tip to the mask, tried to bunt, missed, and Rogers gunned a throw down to third to pick Guerrero, who was straying too far from the bag.
Addison Barger grounded out to first on the next pitch, and the threat was extinguished.
The Blue Jays also got two runners on with one out in the sixth, with a single and a walk. Bichette then personally elevated Skubal’s pitch count with an insane, 13-pitch at-bat, which ended in a walk and loaded the bases. Heineman hit a soft fly ball to centre; Matt Vierling couldn’t get there in time, but the runners had to hold up. Vierling fielded the ball on a bounce, fired a dart to home and got George Springer out on the ol’ 8-2 fielder’s choice. Barger was then called out for excessive window-shopping on a 101-mph fastball and the game remained scoreless.
With two outs in the bottom of the sixth, Gleyber Torres hit a fly ball to right that clanked off Barger’s glove, but Riley Greene struck out and the Tigers, again, could not score.
Skubal’s day was done, Tommy Kahnle came in and he benefited from a pair of fine defensive plays: Torkelson made a great pick on a throw from Javier Báez, and Zach McKinstry made a fine over-the-shoulder catch on a soft popup into no-man’s-land.
A routine flyout to centre concluded the 1-2-3 inning, and if Kahnle is now a reliable option in the bullpen again, my goodness, that would be a giant asset.
A well-rested Will Vest came on for the eighth, and a wild pitch pushed the runners up to second and third. Guerrero grounded out harmlessly, but a Bichette single plated a pair of runners and it was 2-0 for Toronto.
Chase Lee entered the game in the top of the ninth, and brother, he did not help things. Ernie Clement greeted him with a single, then Nathan Lukes followed with a two-run home run to right for a 4-0 lead. Springer followed with a screamer to the right-centre seats to make it 5-0, and Guerrero thought a solo home run was just the ticket so he did the same to left over the bullpens for a 6-0 game. That escalated quickly. That got out of hand, fast.
The bottom of the ninth saw Rogers get his, and the team’s, second hit of the game; he advanced to second and then third on defensive indifference and came home on a Greene groundout, but that was it. Alas, another Tigers defeat was in the books. The way I figure it, AJ Hinch can have exactly one (1) scream-and-yell rant at his team per season, and now might be a fine time for that to happen.
The Tigers look to salvage one game out of this lousy series on Sunday afternoon against Old Friend™ Max Scherzer.
Final score: Blue Jays 6, Tigers 1
Numbers and Anniversaries
- In the ten games leading into tonight’s game, the Tigers are batting .207, with a .593 OPS. That’s not great.
- But, consider the following: Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABip) can tell you how lucky or unlucky hitters are. By month, here’s the Tigers’ BABip: .303, .307, .304, .258. The average is about .295, which means the Tigers were a little bit lucky (not outrageously so) until July, and then, holy moly, not so much.
- On this day in 1814, the Swedish-Norwegian War started. Now, I don’t know about you, but those two countries don’t seem like they’d ever want to fight a war with each other, but I guess it was a couple of centuries ago. The end result was that the two countries entered into a “personal union” with Sweden calling most of the shots for Norway; it was also the last time to date that Sweden has fought a war with another country. I swear, though, if the Allen key I need to assemble my Blörkdådørp from Ikea is missing again, I might just declare war on Sweden myself and see what happens.
- (For the record, I know that the Swedish language does not use the letter ø, but for the purposes of comedy, it sure does. So for the person reading this in Linköping who was about to fire off an angry email, just cool your jets, buddy.)
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