Tigers end 6-game skid with 2-1 victory over Rangers

Chris McCosky, The Detroit News on Jul 20, 2025

Published in Baseball

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ARLINGTON, Texas – For all the verbal despair and Chicken Little musings on talk radio and social media platforms during this six-game losing streak, the Detroit Tigers Sunday night, before a national audience via ESPN, still became the first team in baseball to reach 60 wins.

Crisis averted?

After giving up the lead on a wild pitch in the bottom of the seventh, Matt Vierling delivered a two-out, two-strike RBI single in the top of the eighth, sending the Tigers to a skid-busting 2-1 win over the Texas Rangers at Globe Life Field.

For that clutch knock to matter, though, the Tigers had to jump on the back of their two-time All Star and reigning Cy Young winner for six-plus innings. Tarik Skubal, pitching with the slimmest margin for error, was brilliant. Powerfully so.

He protected a 1-0 lead through six innings, limiting the Rangers to two hits, both by his nemesis Corey Seager.

With one out in the seventh, Adolis Garcia, who Skubal had struck out twice, lined a double into the left-field corner, one of the few mislocated changeups Skubal threw. Kyle Higoshioka followed with single to center, advancing Garcia to third.

With his pitch count climbing over 100, Skubal bowed his neck and won an eight-pitch fight with Jonah Heim, finally striking him out with a changeup. That was his 11th strikeout and his 105th pitch.

Lefty Tyler Holton was summoned. He got two strikes on rookie Cody Freeman. But he bounced a 1-2 breaking ball that caromed off catcher Dillon Dingler’s chest protector far enough to allow Garcia to scamper home with the tying run.

Agonizing. But that’s the price sometimes when the margins are so thin. Holton, though, didn’t buckle. He retired Freeman to end the seventh and struck out the first two hitters in the eighth before handing the baton to Will Vest.

Vest came in hot, throwing three straight 97.8-mph heaters to strike out Wyatt Langford to end the eighth and then had to go through the heart of the Texas lineup in the ninth.

Again, with no margin for error.

He did so on six pitches. He got Seager to ground out and Marcus Semien to fly out on two pitches and he struck out Garcia to get his 16th save.

The margins were paper thin because the Tigers offense never got untracked in Texas. Even on a night when the Rangers had to scratch their ace, Nathan Eovaldi, because of back soreness. They did very little damage against rookie lefty Jacob Latz.

One run. It came in the third on singles by Wenceel Perez, Dingler and Zach McKinstry. It was the first lead of the series and the back-to-back hits by Dingler and McKinstry were the first by the Tigers in an inning since the third inning last Sunday against the Mariners.

It looked like Skubal would make that skinny run stand up.

He was in full attack mode right from the start. He racked up four strikeouts in the first two innings, throwing 21 strikes in his first 29 pitches and getting seven whiffs on 15 swings.

He took it up a notch in the third. Rookie Justin Foscue, just recalled from Triple-A Round Rock, seemed to raise Skubal’s ire a bit, taking his time getting into the box, even after the longer ESPN commercial break between innings.

Skubal’s first pitch was a 96-mph heater that backed Foscue off the plate. Skubal quickly got ahead 1-2 and then followed a middle-middle changeup with a 98-mph four-seamer dotted on the bottom rail for a called strike three.

Skubal proceeded to strike out the side in the third, giving him seven punch-outs in eight hitters.

He got No. 8 in the fourth, locking up the dangerous Garcia with a changeup that seemed to start in the right-handed batters box and darted back into the strike zone.

The only Rangers hitter immune to his power was lefty Seager. He doubled in the first and singled in the fourth, giving him eight hits in 11 at-bats at that point against Skubal in his career.

Skubal got another shot at him in the sixth and got him to line out to second on a first-pitch changeup. Skubal threw his arms in the air in mock triumph.

The Rangers whiffed on 20 of their 59 swings against Skubal. The average exit velocity on the 13 balls in play was 85.9 mph.

Skubal lowered his ERA to 2.19 and in 20 starts he's amassed 164 strikeouts and 16 walks. Since 1901, only two pitchers have amassed those numbers in 20 games -- Clayton Kershaw and Skubal.

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