John Niyo: It's time to sell after Tigers' bullpen seals Skubal's fate

DETROIT — If this was it, Tarik Skubal tried to make it last.

But all good things come to an end, as the saying goes. And the way Skubal’s latest start went Wednesday afternoon — and specifically the way it went after he'd done his job — probably should remove all doubt for the Tigers: It’s time to sell.

At least when it comes to Skubal, the two-time reigning Cy Young Award winner and the most coveted trophy ahead of next week’s trade deadline. The Tigers’ ace is simply too valuable a commodity to waste. And watching AJ Hinch’s team try — and try again — to waste this opportunity Wednesday, blowing a 7-0 lead against the Orioles with another epic bullpen meltdown, that really should be the takeaway here.

Forget the final score of a ridiculous game, which took 12 innings, 14 pitchers, 19 runs and four errors to decide. Or the history the Tigers made once Skubal left the mound to what may have been a final ovation from a crowd of 34,406 at Comerica Park. To find the last time the Tigers lost a game they’d led by seven runs or more after six innings you have go all the way back to 1986 against the then-California Angels.

Yet to find the last time they’ve squandered an opportunity like this, you can practically pick a week — any week — over the last four months. And you could hear the frustration in Hinch's voice at the postgame podium — "I don’t have a word to describe some emotion — you can probably see it," he said — just as easily as you could see the resignation on Skubal's face as he stood in front of his locker trying to explain this latest roller-coaster crash.

"We’re up 7-0 at one point in that game and you end up losing — I don’t even know the final score — that’s tough for sure," Skubal said, arms folded across his chest in an all-too-familiar pose. "That one hurts, you know?"

After this one, everybody knew. And if Scott Harris, the team president, is being honest with himself, it really shouldn’t come down to these desperate final days before the MLB trade deadline to decide what to do. Two-thirds of the way through this torturous Tigers season, we can see pretty clearly what they are and, more important, what they aren’t.

For weeks, if not months, Hinch has referred to his Tigers as a “good baseball team with a bad record,” a description that was backed by the statistics as well as the standings. But even as they’ve climbed out of the dreary depths they found in May, they still look nothing like a genuine pennant contender. Certainly not with this bullpen, which racked up a whopping 25th blown save (in 46 chances) this season, second-most in the majors behind the Washington Nationals.

And, quite frankly, that should make Harris’ next move easier to sell, trading Skubal to a true contender for a haul that could help the Tigers get over the top themselves. And save them the embarrassment of missing out on the postseason in October and then losing their ace a month or two later in free agency, recouping only a supplemental draft pick.

That’s not what anyone wanted to talk about before Wednesday’s game, obviously. Certainly not Hinch, who understandably scoffed at the suggestion the Tigers should hold back Skubal from his final pre-deadline start to protect his trade value against the possibility of an injury.

"Pitching Tarik today was never really up in the air unless it was external," Hinch said. “We continue to talk about winning series, winning weeks, winning months. It's how I talk, and it's how Scott (Harris) and (general manager) Jeff (Greenberg) talk about our team and everything we do.”

To his credit, it’s all Skubal has done, too, blocking out the distractions and performing like an ace, start after start.

Wednesday’s was no different, either, beginning like any other would for Skubal as he warmed up in the bullpen 20 minutes before the game’s first pitch. And after falling behind a 2-0 count against the Orioles’ leadoff hitter, Taylor Ward, Skubal quickly found his groove and got him swinging on a 3-2 change-up.

That was his first strikeout of the game but the 1,000th of his MLB career, making him the fastest to reach the milestone in a Tigers uniform, surpassing Max Scherzer. The matinee crowd gave Skubal a standing ovation to celebrate the moment, which gave Skubal time to step off the mound and return the favor, removing his ballcap and clapping into his glove.

"When the fans get on their feet like that and give you a pretty good ovation, it’s special — it’ll never not be special," Skubal said. "And it’s something I’ve always appreciated and hopefully they feel the same way. Hopefully, they feel I’ve given everything to the team and to the city, because I truly have."

The next hitter brought everyone back to reality, as Pete Alonso drilled a first-pitch fastball to center field for a single. But from there, Skubal mostly cruised, even though admittedly he wasn't in full command. He needed just 74 pitches to get through six scoreless innings, bounding off the mound after blowing a 98-mph two-seamer past Alonso to retire his 14th straight batter.

It wasn’t until the top of the seventh inning that Skubal began to falter, ever so slightly. He gave up a leadoff single to Gunnar Henderson and then a two-out walk to Coby Mayo, which brought Hinch out of the dugout to a chorus of boos as he made a mound visit.

"I went out there to let him know it was his last hitter," Hinch explained later. "I just wanted him to know this was it. He didn’t have to manage the inning, trying to dance around anything."

But Skubal promptly fell behind 2-0 to Leodys Taveras and then was hopping mad as he watched him line a sinker to center field to spoil the shutout and end Skubal’s day.

The crowd saluted him once more — to use Hinch's parlance, they knew this might be it — and Skubal acknowledged them again as he exited. His face didn’t betray any emotions as he left the field, and as he took a seat in the dugout next to Casey Mize and Justin Verlander his first reaction was to take a look at the tablet Mize was holding to review one of his final pitches.

What happened next, though, was something that has happened far too often this season. Skubal’s final line took a hit as Kyle Finnegan let both inherited runners score in another frustrating outing. And it only got worse from there, as a parade of relievers offered anything but that on a day where the final result never should’ve been in doubt.

"It sucks when it starts to evaporate and you're still in the game," Hinch said, as he tried to rationalize another win that'd been thrown away.

But the same can be said for the larger picture here for the Tigers, who began the day five games out of first place in the AL Central and six teams out (3 1/2 games) of the final AL wild-card spot. Their odds of making the postseason stood at 30.8%, according to Fangraphs. Or to put it another way, with two-thirds of the season already gone, they had less than a 1 in 3 chance of making the playoffs.

Broken-ballclub narrative

Of course, the last two months have put a different spin on the ball-breaking, broken-ballclub narrative. The Tigers also entered Wednesday with the second-best record in AL since the All-Star break (29-19), only a half-game behind the Red Sox in that span. Still, the math hadn’t gotten markedly better. Since June 1, they’d picked up just three games in the division and wild-card chase, and as they boarded a flight for Sacramento and their final series before the deadline, those playoffs odds took another hit.

But while the odds of Skubal getting dealt likely moved in the other direction, Hinch wasn't going to go there.

"I just can’t think in hypotheticals," he said.

Neither would Skubal, who was asked more than once to consider the possibility he'd just made his final start wearing the Old English "D"

"I don’t even really want to speculate, to be honest," Skubal said. "I try to live where I’m at right now. And right now I’m a Detroit Tiger. I don’t really want to speculate a ton on what’s happening or what the future holds, because I don’t know. I understand the questions. I understand what could happen or what could change a week from now. But I don’t really like thinking like that. It’s a tough place to be."

For a brief moment, though, Skubal did allow himself to think about how far he'd come. This was his 150th major league start, and it felt far different from his first, a "pretty forgettable debut" which came in an empty White Sox ballpark during the COVID-shortened 2020 season when "I got my teeth kicked in a bunch," as Skuball recalled.

That was the year he and Mize broke into the big leagues together, and the 2018 draft classmates — Mize as the No. 1 overall pick, Skubal an overlooked ninth-rounder — have been mostly inseparable since. And as Mize sat in the Tigers’ clubhouse Wednesday morning, he couldn’t help but to get a little nostalgic, too.

All these years later, both starting pitchers are facing an uncertain future in Detroit — pending free agents this winter, potential trade targets this week. And when asked about all the speculation swirling around the pair, Mize sighed and smiled, “Yeah, it's comforting in a way.”

“A ton of shared experience, obviously, dating back to being drafted together and minor leagues and injuries and success and failure and whatever,” he said. “So I've been able to kind of tuck under him a little bit, which has been nice for me. Maybe not so much for him.”

He laughed and added, “I don't know the big leagues without Tarik. But we'll see what comes of it. I'm not entirely sure. I've enjoyed every second that I've been his teammate, because he's such a good player and good person and my best friend. So it's sad to think that it could be coming to an end. And I hope that's not the case. But we'll see.”

We'll all see, soon enough. But after what we saw Wednesday, it sure felt like an ending of sorts. Maybe it’s not an open-and-shut case, but if there was any doubt about a final verdict, the Tigers' closing argument was a failure.