Minnesota Twins find Tarik Skubal too tough in loss to Detroit Tigers

DETROIT - Ty France remembers exactly what he thought as his soft fly ball landed just an inch or two beyond right fielder Kerry Carpenter’s glove as he dove to the turf:

Oh, thank God.

Yes, the Twins were thinking the same thing as the million-plus viewers watching ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball” national telecast: Tarik Skubal might be pitching a no-hitter.

He settled for one hit allowed over seven unhittable innings, his 10th consecutive victory and 11th in a row at Comerica Park, and a 3-0 Tigers victory over the extremely impressed Twins.

“He throws 100. He locates really well. He has a lot of decision in his delivery, and throws a changeup that you don’t pick up,” Ryan Jeffers recounted of his own 0-for-3 against the Tigers’ ace lefthander, last year’s unanimous Cy Young winner and a runaway favorite to make it back-to-back this year. “He’s the best pitcher, if not one of the best pitchers, in the game right now.”

OK, Jeffers can be forgiven for twisting that phrase out of its logical order. He had just watched Skubal tie his career high with 13 strikeouts — amazingly, 12 of them on a swing-and-miss third strike — and open the game by whiffing every Twins hitter except Jeffers in the first three innings. (Skubal quickly checked that box by striking out Jeffers on three pitches his second time up, blowing a 99-mph fastball past him for strike three.)

“I’ll be the first one to say it — it was an unbelievable performance on his end, so kudos to him. It was fun to watch,” said Twins starter Chris Paddack, who definitely was not the first to say it, not with 40,718 in the park standing and cheering as Skubal walked off the field after completing seven innings. “I just wish I could have given him a little better matchup tonight, because I live for those moments.”

Actually, Paddack was quite good, too, though far less efficient than Skubal. He needed 91 pitches to get through 4 ⅔ innings but made only two big mistakes.

The righthander allowed solo home runs to Kerry Carpenter in the first inning and Riley Greene in the fourth, and they were nearly identical: Paddack kept the ball high in the strike zone until the count reached 3-2, then tried to sneak a changeup lower in the zone past the lefthanded hitters. Both pitches landed in nearly the same spot in the right-center stands, roughly 390 feet away.

“I don’t think it was the wrong pitch, it was just the wrong location. Especially since they’re fouling off stuff up in the zone. Their eyes are already up,” Paddack analyzed. “I just think if I get those changeups at the bottom of the zone for strikes, instead of in the middle where their eyes are able to recognize that’s not a fastball, maybe I get a swing-and-miss. … But man, the stuff tonight was electric.”

If his was electric, then Skubal’s was nuclear. Even the Twins who managed to put the ball in play rarely made hard contact; Byron Buxton’s fourth-inning fly to left was the only ball hit better than 100 mph by the Twins.

“You’re not going to hit the heater when he throws it,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said of Skubal, a near certainty to be named the American League’s starting pitcher in the All-Star Game. “If he throws a heater down the middle, it’s not like that is a pitch that’s easy to get the barrel to.”

And it’s not like his changeup, which Skubal can pinpoint like a darts thrower, is any easier to hit.

BOXSCORE: Tigers 3, Twins 0

MLB standings

“You try to come up with a good plan, but he’s really good. You go up on the fastball for an at-bat and he uses all changeups, or you go up there, ‘Hey, I’m going to try to be on the changeup,’ and then he’ll just throw 99 at you,” said Jeffers, now 1-for-21 in his career against Skubal. “It’s just — he does a really good job of not letting you find a pattern.”

Skubal had retired the first 13 Twins he faced, nine via strikeout, when France came up. The first baseman reached out as a changeup skittered out of the strike zone, getting enough of his bat on the ball to send a soft fly ball arcing toward center field.

Carpenter raced over and dove for the ball, and France was shocked at the result.

“Watch how he went after the ball — I was waiting for him to dive and catch it,” France said, shaking his head at the thought of how close the Twins came to being no-hit by the Tigers for the first time in their history. “Unbelievable.”