Boston — The Red Sox validated something Tigers manager AJ Hinch said before the game Friday.
Asked about playing in the quirky confines of Fenway Park, Hinch said, “It’s not the stadium that beats you, it’s the team that plays here.”
The Red Sox put up one quality at-bat after another and effectively wore down lefty starter Tarik Skubal and wore out the Tigers, taking the first of a three-game weekend set, 5-2.
“They did stress him, probably as much as anybody has in his time back,” Hinch said. “You could argue they pressured him as much as anybody did last year, too. He was under duress from the beginning. He did respond, though.”
Skubal appeared to have good stuff. His four-seam and two-seam fastballs were lighting the radar gun from 96 to 99 mph. He was mixing sliders, changeups and knuckle curves, like he does. But the Red Sox hitters kept spoiling the good ones and putting balls in play.
He posted a season-low three strikeouts and a season-low eight swinging strikes on 42 swings.
“In five of the six innings they put the leadoff guy on, that makes the innings a little more stressful,” said Skubal, who ended up going 5⅓ innings, allowing seven hits, being charged with five runs (four earned) and didn’t have one clean inning. “I felt like I did a good job competing. But the numbers aren’t in your favor when you’re not getting the leadoff guy out.
“They did a good job. But it wasn’t necessarily hard hits. One was hard. Everything else was through holes, blooped over guys and off some gloves.”
BOX SCORE: Red Sox 5, Tigers 2
To his point, the Red Sox put 19 balls in play against him with an average exit velocity of 87.6 mph.
“Also, I don’t know how many first-pitch strikes I threw (13 to 24 batters), either,” Skubal said. “You need to get ahead of guys to get them to swing and miss more. They were putting balls in play. Even the outs weren’t hard outs. It’s just part of the game. Credit to them for doing it.”
After he gave up an unearned run in the first, Skubal worked around base runners in the second and third and seemed to be treading water going into the fourth.
The leadoff hitter reached again for the fourth straight inning and with one out, the Red Sox had runners at first and second. Skubal left a 1-0 slider over the plate to left-handed hitting Triston Casas and the rookie bashed it 401 feet into the right-field seats, putting Boston up 4-0.
“Obviously, I want that one back,” Skubal said. “I didn’t execute a pitch. A strike-to-strike slider middle-in to a lefty is not where you want to throw it. That’s what they’re supposed to do with it.”
But don’t think for a minute Skubal came out of this one hanging his head. Quite the opposite.
“It’s going to be weird to say it, but it was fun to go out there and compete like that and just keep going at guys,” he said. “That’s really why you play the game. I’m not going to hang my hat on the stat line. I’m not going to let that define what I did out there tonight.”
The Tigers, meanwhile, were playing crash test dummy for Red Sox lefty Chris Sale’s first start back since going on the injured list on June 2. It wasn’t comfortable.
Sale, slinging 95-mph fastballs and darting sliders, dispatched the first 14 Tigers hitters, striking out seven.
“We didn’t get anything going against him,” Hinch said. “He threw 70% strikes, velo was 95-96 mph — it was a little more vintage Sale, more aggressive than we expected. He threw a ton of strikes and commanded the day.”
Kerry Carpenter put an end to his run of outs. The only left-handed hitter in Hinch’s starting lineup, Carpenter unloaded on a 1-1 slider, sending it 434 feet beyond the Red Sox bullpen in right-center. His 13th homer left the bat at 106 mph.
It was Carpenter’s third homer off a left-handed pitcher.
Sale’s night ended one batter later when he hit Javier Báez with a pitch. Báez scored on Riley Greene’s pinch-hit single off right-hander Kyle Barraclough, cutting the Red Sox lead to 4-2.
Báez had an active night at shortstop. His throwing error in the first inning led to an unearned run. But he started two sensational double plays to help save Skubal’s pitch count and extend his outing.
In the second inning, he made a full-out dive going to his left and flipped the ball to second from his belly. In the fifth, he snared a hard-hit ground ball on the second base side of the bag, rerouted himself, stepped on second and fired a strike to first.
So Skubal, at 84 pitches, started the sixth. And again, he gave up a leadoff single (to Trevor Story for the second time in three innings). Skubal struck out Alex Verdugo and, at 94 pitches, his night was over.
Right-hander Will Vest, just activated off the injured list, was summoned. Story, who stole second against Skubal, went to third on a long fly out by Pablo Reyes.
That brought left-handed hitting Casas to the plate again. Hinch, who normally disdains free passes, issued an intentional walk to Casas, setting up a righty-righty matchup with Vest and No. 9 hitter Connor Wong.
Wong won. He slapped an RBI single to right field.
“It was about Casas and his 1.200 OPS in the second half,” Hinch said. “He’s been one of the best hitters in the big leagues in the second half and we loved the matchup behind him. They won that matchup but I’d seen Casas go deep and he could change the score again for two runs.
“I felt more comfortable with the matchup after that.”
The Tigers, who came in riding a three-game win streak, never threatened after the fifth. Lefty reliever Chris Murphy locked them down for the final three innings. The Tigers finished with two hits.
Their record against the American League East falls to 4-19.
chris.mccosky@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @cmccosky