The Chicago White Sox took a first-inning lead against the Detroit Tigers for the third game in a row.
In those three opening frames, the White Sox scored one race on Friday on left-hander Eduardo Rodriguez, two races on Saturday on right-hander Casey Mize and two races on Sunday on left-hander Tarik Skubal.
To go with the two early runs in Sunday’s series final, the White Sox continued to hammer Skubal, adding two runs in the third inning and one more in the fourth. The Tiger offensive, meanwhile, never showed up in the 10-1 loss at Comerica Park to drop the series by three games.
“You just have to turn the page,” said third baseman Jeimer Candelario.
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The Tigers (1-2) scored their one run on two hits and two walks.
They also had two throwing errors, including a lazy throw from shortstop Javier Báez, who pulled first baseman Spencer Torkelson off the bag in the fourth inning. The failure of Báez, who signed a $ 140 million six-year contract this offseason, led to the White Sox’s fourth run.
Skubal allowed five runs (four earned) on seven hits and a walk with three strikeouts across four innings.
“There’s no good way to describe a loss,” manager AJ Hinch said. “We’ll flush it out here and come to Boston (Monday-Wednesday in Comerica Park). I’m not going to get obsessed with it, except of course we have to tackle a few things. It got a little ugly, but losing 2-1 would also have been ugly. ”
Anything but 7th heaven
Against righty reliever Elvin Rodriguez, who made his MLB debut in seventh inning, the White Sox broke up the game with Eloy Jimenez ‘RBI single and Andrew Vaughn’s three-run homerun.
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Rodriguez threw scoreless fifth and sixth innings, but the 24-year-old was crushed when he returned to his third inning of work to face the heart of Chicago’s order for the second time.
“We need innings,” Hinch said. “Elvin did a good job. The line is not going to do him justice. I thought he threw the ball well. He was calm and had a good fastball and he had total control over the laps he had. One bad break to “Vaughn changed the whole line. It’s not his fault.”
He allowed four runs on three hits and two walks with two strikeouts in 2⅔ innings.
“Because it was my first time here, I tried to perform my pitches, and I did,” Rodriguez said, while Tigers bilingual media coordinator Carlos Guillen interpreted. “I performed well that way. My fastball and my slider, both were very good today.”
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V is for Victor
The Tigers scored their lone run in the second inning as Miguel Cabrera pulled a one-out walk and Victor Reyes – in his first record appearance of the season – teased a ninth-pitch fastball from White Sox starter Michael Kopech.
The two-out hit from Reyes, with an exit speed of 109 mph, rose into the right-center field gap and scored Cabrera. Torkelson followed with a four-pitch walk to put runners on the corners, but Tucker Barnhart flew out to center for third out.
Aside from that inning, the Tigers were shut down by the White Sox.
Kopech allowed a run of two hits and two walks with three strikeouts in four innings. Bullpen continued his dominance through the seventh, with three perfect innings from Kyle Crick, Matt Foster and Kendall Graveman.
White Sox left-hander Tanner Banks, who made his MLB debut, went on to reyes to open the eighth inning, giving the Tigers their first baserunner since Torkelson’s two-out walk in the second.
Head of
The return of Chicago shortstop Tim Anderson, who sat out the first two games due to a suspension, made an immediate impact; The All-Star started the game by hitting Skubal’s first ball to the left of a double.
Then Luis Robert single-handedly put runners in the corners. Jose Abreu (groundout) and Jimenez (sacrifice fly) notched RBIs for a 2-0 White Sox lead in the first inning. The White Sox finished with an average starting speed of 93.8 mph against the Tigers’ No. 3 starter.
“I just never really found a good rhythm,” Skubal said. “I did not put the fastball where I wanted. The shift command was not very good either. I did not really feel too much today.”
Skubal hit three strokes in the second: Josh Harrison (see, 82.1 mph change), Reese McGuire (viewer, 95.6 mph sinking) and Danny Mendick (swinging, 95.6 mph four-seamer).
But Anderson came back to the plate in the third and hit a leadoff single. Abreu doubled him home, after which Harrison beat Abreu to a 4-1 lead. In the fourth, Mendick’s double made it 5-1, but Skubal was not charged with a deserved run due to Báez’s error.
Anderson is 7-to-14 (0.500) with five doubles, a walk and three strikeouts against Skubal in his career. He had a stroke average of .389 in 17 games against the Tigers last season.
“He’s just as dangerous as any leadoff hitter in baseball,” Hinch said. “It’s not easy to keep control of him on the plate or on the bases. There’s a reason he’s leading and it’s one of the better teams in the American league. Getting their spark plugs back changes their lineup.”
For Skubal’s 79 pitches (50 strikes), he used 37 four-seam fastballs (47%), 22 changeups (28%), seven curveballs (9%), seven sinkers (9%) and six sliders (8%). He almost dropped his shooter for a heavy mix of fastball prey.
“It looked like a funky pitch use,” Hinch said. “Many changes, not many breaking-balls. The ones he threw were hit a little bit. He had to work inning after inning because he was unable to complete slaughter against a good offensive.”
Skubal recorded nine swings and misses: four four-seamers, three changeups, a curveball and a slider. He also had 10 called strikes, including four four-seamers and three changeups.
His fastball averaged 93.6 mph.
“Looking back, I probably should have thrown (the slider) more,” Skubal said. “Bindsight is 20/20. But if I make those changes because it’s a course I really wanted to throw today, it’s probably different.”
Contact Evan Petzold at epetzold@freepress.com or follow him on Twitter @EvanPetzold. Read more about the Detroit Tigers and sign up for our Tigers newsletter.