Behind Skubal and a Carpenter Blast, the Tigers Prevail in a Game 2 Thriller

After the Detroit Tigers beat the Houston Astros in the opener of their Wild Card series, I wrote that while Tarik Skubal wasn’t perfect, he was very good, and that was enough to lead his team to a 3-1 win. The same was true in Game 2 of the ALDS, although this time he wasn’t the biggest story. On an afternoon where the ace left-hander hurled seven scoreless innings, Kerry Carpenter came off the bench and hit the biggest home run of his life against a lights-out closer. When the dust had settled, the Tigers had evened their series against the Cleveland Guardians at one game apiece with a 3-0 win.

The matchup between Skubal and Matthew Boyd offered both a contrast in styles and, at least on paper, a mismatch. After undergoing Tommy John surgery last year, the 33-year-old Boyd wasn’t offered a major league contract during the offseason, and he remained unsigned until June, when he signed a one-year deal with Cleveland for an undisclosed salary. He appeared in only eight big league games during the regular season. As it turned out, Boyd ended up matching this season’s likely American League Cy Young winner pitch-for-pitch for four-plus innings before the Guardians turned to what has been baseball’s best bullpen this season.

The early frames accentuated the contrast in styles. Through three innings, Boyd relied heavily on soft stuff, throwing more changeups than fastballs, while Skubal relied primarily on high-90s heaters, mostly leaving his own plus changeup in his back pocket. Hitters on both sides were left floundering. By the time the Guardians batted in the bottom of the fifth, the Tigers had the game’s only four hits, and one of them was of the infield-dribbler variety.

The fourth of Detroit’s hits produced one of the game’s several defensive gems. In the fifth inning, Justyn-Henry Malloy stroked a ball into the right-field corner, only to be thrown out trying to advance to second on a laser beam by Jhonkensy Noel. What looked like a sure double was instead the second out, at which point Boyd, who had thrown 72 pitches, was lifted for overpowering right-hander Cade Smith. Smith, who had fanned all four batters he faced in Cleveland’s Game 1 win, promptly struck out Matt Vierling.

It was the first time that Boyd had pitched at least four scoreless innings since May 11, 2021 — 32 appearances ago — during the first of his two stints with the Tigers. In other words, the Guardians weren’t expecting volume from him. His sharp 4 2/3 innings were all the Guardians could have hoped for when they named him their Game 2 starter.

The Tigers, on the other hand, were going to stay with Skubal for as long as they could, and his having retired the first 12 batters suggested that maybe something special was in the works. Instead, he found himself in fifth-inning peril. A one-out double by Josh Naylor gave the Guardians their first baserunner, and after Skubal hit Noel with a pitch, suddenly there were two on with Andrés Giménez coming to the plate. The threat was over in a flash, though. Skubal induced a double play on his very next pitch to get out of the jam.

An inning later, Cleveland threatened again with another one-out double, this time courtesy of Brayan Rocchio. Steven Kwan followed that up with a groundball single to left on a nine-pitch at-bat to put runners on the corners. (Rocchio would have been a dead duck had he attempted to score). Skubal was now at 82 pitches and in need of some magic if he were going to escape unscathed. Voilà. Just as he’d done in the previous frame, the southpaw induced a double play, smoothly turned by rookies Trey Sweeney and Colt Keith.

The final three innings provided the biggest thrill of what was already an entertaining, nail-biting game.

After Smith retired the first batter of the seventh, left-hander Tim Herrin came on and delivered a pitch to Parker Meadows that was hit well to right field and looked like it had a chance to break the scoreless tie. No such luck for the Tigers. The ball settled into Noel’s glove a handful of steps in front of the fence. A walk and a punch out later, the struggling Detroit lineup had been held scoreless in an inning for the 31st time this postseason — out of 34 total innings up to that point.

Skubal breezed through the seventh inning, and at 92 pitches it seemed like another inning might be in order. He’d thrown as many as 100 pitches in a game just four times this year, with a high of 103, and while he was approaching that total, he is arguably the game’s best pitcher and, in baseball terminology, a horse.

One-out doubles were a theme again in the eighth, and this time it was the Tigers who threatened to break the scoreless tie. Vierling did the honors against Hunter Gaddis, who’d come on in relief of Herrin, but he was left stranded at second. That Vierling didn’t score required a piece of defensive brilliance from the player who led all players at his position in DRS in the regular season. After Gaddis fanned Keith and issued an intentional walk to Riley Greene, Emmanuel Clase came in to face Wenceel Pérez, who lined a ball to left-center field that had base hit written all over it — per Baseball Savant, it had a .840 xBA. A diving Kwan caught it. Video review was needed to confirm that it was indeed leather, and not grass, that the ball had initially contacted, but Kwan had saved the day for Cleveland… at least for the time being.

An equally impactful great catch followed in the bottom half of the eighth. Kyle Manzardo, pinch-hitting with two outs, hit a ball 380 feet — the farthest a ball had been propelled all day — and Meadows leapt against the wall in left center to rob the rookie of a home run. That the pitch had been thrown by Will Vest was part of the story. A.J. Hinch had pulled his horse, leaving it up to his relievers to continue holding the Guardians off the scoreboard.

Then came the ninth-inning swing that decided the game. In shocking fashion, baseball’s best reliever allowed a ninth-inning blast that not only dwarfed Manzardo’s in distance, it came with two runners on board. Jake Rogers and Sweeney singled off of Clase — he of the 47 saves and 0.61 ERA during the regular season — bringing up Carpenter, who had pinch-hit for Malloy the inning prior. On a 2-2 pitch, Carpenter clubbed a Clase heater deep into the Cleveland night, leaving Progressive Field in stunned silence. The ball left his bat at 110.8 mph, and by the time it landed it had traveled 423 feet.

How epic was the blast? Per OptaSTATs, Carpenter is the first big leaguer to hit a two-out, two-strike, go-ahead home run in the ninth inning of a postseason game since Kirk Gibson did so in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series. According to ESPN Stats and Info, Carpenter is the third player in Tigers history to hit a go-ahead homer in the ninth inning or later, joining Al Kaline in 1972 and Magglio Ordonez in 2006. Moreover, it was the hardest hit ball Clase has given up in his entire career, as well as the hardest hit ball of Carpenter’s career.

Moments later it was all over. Beau Brieske came out of the Detroit bullpen for the bottom half of the ninth and needed just a dozen pitches to close out the game. Thanks to Skubal and the solid defense behind him — but mostly to a big swing by Carpenter — the Tigers prevailed in the pitchers duel. In a postseason that has already included some great games, this was yet another.

Game 3 will be played in Detroit on Wednesday.