Detroit Tigers’ ace Tarik Skubal has a chance to put his stamp in franchise history on Friday night as their all-time great playoff performer. Through five playoff starts, the flame-throwing southpaw holds
a 2.14 ERA so he’s already well on his way past Justin Verlander, though JV’s work in the 2013 postseason remains pretty close to untouchable as a single season run. We’ll leave Mickey Lolich out of this, as there just weren’t many opportunities for postseason starts in those days until the playoff expansions began. Heading into a winner take all Game 5 at T-Mobile Park against he Seattle Mariners, Skubal is one more strong start from separating him as the top postseason performer since the playoffs expanded to include the divisional round back in 1994.
Of course history can come later. Right now the Tigers need to win as a team any which way they can. With everything on the line in Game 5 of the ALDS, the Tigers need Skubal to exorcise his demons from last season’s ALDS and give them one more big time start to advance. They’ll also have to show some adaptation and handle right-hander George Kirby a little better than the last time around in Game 1.
Of course, in a winner take all game it’s also an open question as to how far Mariners manager Dan Wilson will ride Kirby before going to the pen. If it’s similar to Game 1, the Tigers will see a lot of their bullpen and this is probably going to be a nail biter in the late innings. Best to expect that anyway.
Last time out, Kirby threw 47 percent sinkers, 31 percent sliders, and 17 percent fourseam fastballs, with a few curveballs and changeups tossed in here and there for flavor. That’s a more sinker-based approach than normal for him. Perhaps that reflects the Tigers’ greater difficulty with horizontal movement than in going up and down in the zone. It would certainly help the Tigers if they can force Kirby into the zone more, because while he’ll always strike out his fair share of hitters, he also gives up an awful lot of hard contact as well. T-Mobile Park’s spacious outfield and thick air close to sea level, along with a solid ground ball rate, help him to keep the home runs from piling up on him.
It’s a fairly simple approach of sinkers up at the top of the zone and sliders down, with Kirby expanding up and down when ahead in the count. However, his stuff is very good and while the Tigers hit several balls hard in Game 1 that found gloves and Kerry Carpenter’s two-run shot did real damage, they’re going to have to time him up more effectively and refuse to give in and chase when behind in the count. Hopefully they can carry some of their Game 4 success over, because it’s doubtful Kirby has much else up his sleeve. It’s just on the Tigers to adapt to their second look at him in a week. We wouldn’t mind seeing someone take a called strike three early on just to establish that they’re going to make him throw strikes.
Kirby benefited from an extremely big strike zone from home plate umpire Alex Tosi in Game 1. Alan Porter will be behind home plate in this one, and he has a reputation for a good, consistent zone that just slightly favors the hitters by not giving much off the edges for strikes. Those extra strikes on the fastballs really helped Kirby to get ahead of Tigers hitters or back into counts if he missed egregiously. Then the steady dose of sliders was there to finish him off. It will be interesting to see if Kirby tries to change things up by leaning into his fourseamer and slider more in this one, or perhaps drops in some extra curveballs. Or perhaps he’ll stick with what worked, and the Tigers will see a ton of sinkers again, with few if any sliders actually in the zone. Either way, if Porter forces both pitchers into the zone, that favors Skubal’s better stuff over Kirby.
As for Tarik Skubal, he was excellent in Game 2, with the exception of Jorge Polanco’s two solo shots. Skubal didn’t throw that many changeups to the Mariners. After using the pitch 31.4 percent of the time in the regular season, he threw just 22 percent changeups to the Mariners. With Polanco and Cal Raleigh hitting right-handed against him, that’s a surprisingly low number. It may reflect that Skubal wasn’t feeling as in command of the pitch as usual, convincing him to go hardball and mix in his slider more as well. It could also just have been the gameplan, and using the slider a little more and the changeup less worked for him as only Polanco was able to deal with it.
Will he try to surprise the Mariners by using his best pitch, and the best pitch in baseball by run value, less yet again? It will be interesting to see, but if he’s feeling his command of the changeup, one can probably expect him to lean on it more heavily, particularly as most of the Mariners big bats didn’t see that many of them last time out.
So there’s a cat and mouse game at play that is only amplified by the stakes. Do you stick with what worked last time out, or do you try to throw a wrinkle in the game plan? Or, do both pitchers simply throw pitch mix adjustments out the window and go fully into attack mode?
For Kirby, I wouldn’t be surprised if he focuses on staying out of Tigers hitters hot zones and hopes to get some extra calls his way yet again. Pitch count probably won’t be a concern and Dan Wilson might even decide to go to Luis Castillo pretty early. That game plan would probably look like Kirby until the Tigers put him into a little trouble. At that point, Wilson might use one of his best relievers, even early in the game, and then simply turn back to Castillo for innings after the threat ends, turning back to his best relievers again and for the rest of the game if Castillo should falter.
Wilson is going to have a lot of tough decisions to make in this game and will probably have to start making them fairly early on. Apart from looking to get Jahmai Jones’ bat into the game against Gabe Speier, AJ Hinch will only have one really crucial one, which is how far to ride his ace? As long as his pitch count is reasonable, you stay with Skubal as long as possible, and then turn the game over to Will Vest. Kyle Finnegan or Tyler Holton might provide a bridge depending on how far Skubal goes and the situation when he’s finally lifted.
One final detail from the pitching side—and AJ Hinch would probably say I’m over-thinking this—is the fact that Will Vest should be the freshest reliever in the series, appearing only twice, and only one of those under pressure. I didn’t love getting him into the game to close out Game 4 with a six-run lead, preferring to limit the Mariners looks at him, but ultimately trickery isn’t really Vest’s forte anyway. He’s going to come after Mariners hitters aggressively, and perhaps it was more important just to get him an inning of work after chilling for three days straight from Game 2 through Game 3.
Alright, enough said. There’s nothing to do now but see how things play out, and if everything written here gets thrown out the window in a chaotic game, that won’t be a surprise. Postseason games do their own thing and chaos reigns. Just hope the Tigers can come through with a victory. If the Mariners can win their fourth Skubal start of the season, they certainly deserve to advance and take on the Toronto Blue Jays in the ALCS.
