Cleveland — There aren’t many first-inning knockouts in baseball. But, the way lefty starter Tarik Skubal was throwing Friday, it felt like the Tigers scored one in the first game of the doubleheader at Progressive Field.
Akil Baddoo hit the second pitch of the game 412 feet into the second row of shrubbery in center field, his second career leadoff home run. Then with two outs, Spencer Torkelson doubled, Kerry Carpenter singled and Miguel Cabrera doubled.
The Tigers rode that early flurry to a 4-2 win over the Guardians.
BOX SCORE: Tigers 4, Guardians 2 (Game 1)
Credit to Skubal for that. He was brilliant, holding the Cleveland lineup to three hits and a run, with seven strikeouts in six innings. It was a study in contrast: power and finesse.
With the Guardians stacking seven right-handed hitters against him, Skubal went to the changeup as his secondary pitch du jour off his upper-90s fastball. Was it effective? Ask Jose Ramirez.
Ramirez doubled and scored the only run off Skubal in the first inning. He ambushed a first-pitch heater. In his second at-bat, he got the first extended taste of the changeup. He splintered the barrel of his bat twice flailing at and fouling off changeups and then banged a fastball on the ground to shortstop Zach McKinstry.
Skubal then ended that inning striking out Ramon Laureano with a changeup.
That was part of a run of 12 straight outs, with six coming on punch-outs. Three of the six were bagged with changeups.
“I just try to sell it as a fastball and let it do what it wants to do,” Skubal said last week when asked about the evolution of his changeup. “My movement profile is kind of all over the place. As long as I’m killing vert and it looks like a heater, I’m fine.”
In English, please?
“You want to kill vertical movement so it doesn’t ride like a heater,” Skubal said. “You don’t want it to be a batting practice fastball. The velo separation is huge, too. If I’m throwing a 96-mph heater and the changeup at 85-86, and keeping the same arm speed, that’s what you want.”
His fastball on Friday was averaging 95.7 mph and hitting 99. The velo range on his changeup was 83 to 88 and sitting at 85. The vertical movement on the pitch was low (13-15 inches). Nasty combination.
He ended up getting seven swinging strikes on 15 swings at it (16 swinging strikes total) and five called strikes.
Skubal got the handshake from manager AJ Hinch after six innings. He was at 88 pitches.
The Tigers didn’t do much of anything after the three-run first inning. They let Guardians starter Gavin Williams hang around for five innings, stranding runners at second and third in both the third and fifth inning.
They stranded a runner at third in the eighth against reliever James Karinchak, too.
Catcher Jake Rogers, whose pitch-calling with Skubal was flawless, got the Tigers a tack-on run in the ninth, clubbing his 15th homer of the season — an opposite-field blast to right.
Rookie lefty Tyler Holton, as he has done all season, cruised through the seventh and eighth innings, allowing only one base runner (walk). The Guardians scored a run off right-hander Jason Foley in the bottom of the ninth before he locked it down.
The Tigers (55-66) improve to 23-14 against the Central Division.
chris.mccosky@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @cmccosky