Blue Jays miss Tarik Skubal but first-place Tigers look scary
The Toronto Blue Jays won’t see Tarik Skubal this weekend but even without him the AL Central-leading Tigers are a team to be reckoned with.
TORONTO — Once again, the Toronto Blue Jays are dodging Tarik Skubal.
They avoided the American League’s best pitcher twice last year, when he was working his way to a Cy Young Award, and when the Tigers play three games at Rogers Centre this weekend, Skubal won’t be among Detroit’s starting pitchers.
But even without him, the AL Central-leading Tigers are a team to be reckoned with. Since the Blue Jays last saw them in late July of last year, Detroit has the best record in the American League at 66-40, trailing only the NL’s Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres over that stretch.
While the Tigers haven’t made many splashy signings or trades since last summer, they’ve had young players take meaningful steps forward while also getting impact performances from previously struggling players like Javier Baez and Spencer Torkelson. Combine that with core players like Skubal, Riley Greene and Kerry Carpenter, and you have one of the league’s best teams.
“They’re playing really well, man. They’re a good team,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said Thursday afternoon. “They’re well run. They grasp platoon advantages, they can pitch and they have some guys having bounce-back years offensively. So they’re playing really well (and) I think we’re playing well, too.”
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Though the Blue Jays will avoid Skubal, they’ll still face a formidable trio of pitchers in Jack Flaherty (4.61 ERA), Reese Olson (3.38 ERA) and Jackson Jobe (4.32 ERA), while countering with Bowden Francis on Friday, a still to be determined combination of arms on Saturday and Jose Berrios on Sunday.
Jobe, the third overall pick in the 2021 draft, is one of the rookies making an impact in Detroit, along with catcher Dillon Dingler and shortstop Trey Sweeney. Just 22 years old, Jobe has a fastball that averages 96.3 m.p.h., but he has struggled with command issues, including five walks in his last start, and he has only completed six innings once this season.
He might be throwing to Dingler, who has filled in admirably for starter Jake Rogers while he’s been on the injured list with an oblique strain since early April. With a .730 OPS in 32 games, Dingler’s holding his own at the plate as is Sweeney (.720 OPS), who came over to Detroit in the deal that sent Flaherty to the Dodgers last summer.
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The emergence of Sweeney pushed Baez off shortstop, but that hasn’t stopped the 32-year-old from producing. If anything, the move to centre field seems to have re-energized Baez, who has 1.9 WAR and an .842 OPS through 35 games — a remarkable turnaround for someone who hasn’t been a league-average hitter since 2021, when he played for the Cubs and Mets.
Whether that’s sustainable for a player who still chases outside of the strike zone more than 96 per cent of big-leaguers is another question, but his defensive contributions alone have helped at a time that centre fielder Parker Meadows has been on the injured list with a nerve issue.
And in case one bounce-back wasn’t enough, the Tigers are also getting a career-best performance from former first overall pick Spencer Torkelson. Where Baez’s underlying offensive numbers hint that regression is coming, Torkelson’s quality of contact has been excellent, suggesting the return to form is real for the 25-year-old who hit 31 home runs two seasons ago before struggling badly in 2024 and spending much of it in the minors.
Then you have Greene and Carpenter closing in on Torkelson’s team-leading total of 11 home runs, so there’s real left-handed power in this lineup to complement the right-handed Torkelson. Plus, right-handed hitting free agent addition Gleyber Torres has performed well with an .812 OPS and five home runs.
And as Schneider mentioned, the Tigers use platoons well with the likes of Andy Ibanez and Justin-Henry Malloy deployed against tough lefties and Colt Keith and Carpenter available to hit right-handed pitching.
All told, it’s been the third-best offence in baseball with a 116 wRC+. So with or without Skubal, this is much different — and much better — Tigers team than the one the Blue Jays last saw.
“They’re good,” Schneider said. “I hope they got all their wins out of the way before they got here.”
