Tarik Skubal is picking up where he left off

Even though it was raining on Tuesday afternoon, the Colorado Rockies had not yet postponed their evening game with the Detroit Tigers, so I headed to Coors Field at the usual time.

I had not been in the press box long when one of the Rockies public relations staff told me of the schedule change — no game that night but a traditional doubleheader on Thursday. He said, though, that I could keep working. Given the rain and the fact that the press box is a good place to get stuff done, I settled in with my laptop.

A few minutes later, four players emerged from the visitors’ dugout, two pitchers and two catchers. The rest of the Tigers pitching staff would join them soon, but for a few minutes, it was just the four of them playing long toss in the rain.

Tarik Skubal was the first one on the field and easy to pick out — a lefty wearing a black t-shirt with SKUBAL 29 on the back. He kept throwing the ball to the catcher, taking two or three steps back toward center field after every throw.

I watched the Tigers pitching staff work out for 30 minutes or so, nonplussed by the rain. The players ran some sprints, got their work in, and called it a day, exiting through the dugout, just as they’d entered, with Skubal one of the last ones in.

The trip through Colorado finds him picking up where he left off in 2024, a season that saw him winning the AL Triple Crown in addition to the Cy Young Award. This season, his 11.33 K/9 is the sixth best in MLB (first in the AL), and his 0.94 BB/9 is second only to that of Nathan Eovoldi. Add to that the fourth-best WHIP (0.88), a 34 ERA-, and Skubal is on track to another exceptional season.

But at that moment, he was just a guy playing baseball in the rain.

Not long after the Tigers left the field, I headed out, too, but I wondered about a pitching staff so indifferent to the elements.

The next day, Skubal answered a few questions in the Coors Field visitors’ dugout, starting with explaining that unorthodox bullpen session.

(This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)

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Renee Dechert: Yesterday when I was in the press box, I watched you and the rest of the Tigers pitching staff do some long toss in the rain. Is this a regular part of your training regimen?

Tarik Skubal: Yesterday was bullpen day for me, so it’s just part of my routine. So when it’s raining, you just try to keep the ball as dry as possible. But we caught a good window, actually. For about 10-15 minutes, it wasn’t bad at all. So it was good. And then the bullpen out there kind of has a little overhang, so it was manageable.

RD: It looked like you were having kind of an awesome time.

TS [grinning]: Yeah, it was, especially when we were running at the end, and it’s coming down pretty good. You can’t even see where you’re going. It was fun, though. I think that kind of brings you back to Little League almost.

RD: This year, you’re relying more on your changeup, and you’re using your fastball less. Can you talk a bit about the evolution of your changeup and what helped you make that decision?

TS: I think it’s all about game flow. It’s all about kind of understanding what the other team is trying to do, whether they’re trying to hit fastballs or whether they’re trying to hit changeups. I think it’s really hard to do both. I think that you can’t be in between. You got to be on the heater or on the changeup. And then once game flow happens, it’s up to the catcher and what they’re calling and what I’m throwing because it’s not very often that I like to shake. I like to just get the game flow and establish rhythm with the catcher. It’s more so game flow than it is a point of emphasis for me.

RD: You’re known for being able to step on the gas and add a little bit of oomph to your fastball whenever you need to do that. I assume there’s some sort of mental preparation training that you do for that. Where does that come from, given the high-effort nature of the modern pitching game?’

TS: I think every pitch that’s coming out is pretty good effort for me. But just heightened situations, and when runners are in scoring position, and later in games, when the score is probably still a little close, and you want to keep it there, and you know your outing’s coming to a close, I like to just empty the tank and kind of whatever happens, happens. When I wake up the next day, I don’t want to feel like I could have given more. I want to make sure everything that I gave was out there. I play every five days, so I’ve got four days to kind of bounce back for that.

RD: You’ve said, “Don’t try to make a pitch better than it used to be.” What do you mean by that?

TS: I think sometimes we try to make pitches move more than they need to or do too much, and that’s kind of when you either hang it or spike it. You’ve practiced so much and you’ve done it so much. Just execute the pitch and where you’re trying to go with it, and don’t try to do anything outside of what you normally do. That’s probably what I mean by that.

RD: Adam Ottavino told me that pitchers are tinkerers.

TS: Yeah.

RD: They just want to keep trying things. How do you balance that?

TS: It’s always fun. I try different grips all the time because you never know. You never know when you’re one pitch grip, one tinker, one cue away from adding another pitch to your arsenal. You just never know. So I tinker with some things or different cues all the time. But when it’s time to work, and I’m getting my bullpen work in, I’m doing what I’m supposed to do, and then I kind of can tinker on some other days. When I’m out there competing, it’s just time to play baseball. But I do tinker — probably a little bit too much. I don’t think the coaches here like it too much, but I enjoy it.

RD: Do you journal at all? A lot of pitchers talk about doing that.

TS: Yeah.

RD: How does that work for you?

TS: I just write down pretty honest, self-reflective thoughts after outings, after bullpens, after catch plays on things that I liked or didn’t like. You know, I think that you need to be honest with yourself and look yourself in the mirror of what’s really going on in reality, and not live in some other land or your own perception. You need to look yourself in the mirror and be honest with yourself. And I think that you’re probably your own best coach. So I do all that stuff just to kind of hold myself accountable.

RD: The Tigers have put together a really good rotation so far this year. How do you guys collaborate and work together?

TS: I think we just kind of feed off each other. You watch what these guys do, and the work they put in in between starts. They’re all really good pitchers, too — starters, bullpen, our whole, our whole staff is really good, and you just watch them take the mound, and you compete, and it just makes you want to compete. And it’s fun. It’s fun to be a part of, and we’re a group that holds each other accountable, whether it be work in between or what you need to get done. And we’re pretty honest with each other, too. I think that that’s a pretty cool relationship we have with each other.

RD: You’ve talked about count leverage and how important that is in how you approach hitters. Seth Lugo told me last year that he thinks a real benefit for him is the time he spent as a pitcher when he had to hit. Do you feel like that is a missed opportunity?

TS: No, [laughs] I don’t want to be in the box. I have no business being in the box. I don’t want to hit. It’s hard enough to catch some of these guys that you play catch with, so I don’t want to try and hit it.

RD: Last one for me, I know it’s early, but what’s the best pitch you’ve thrown this season, and can you take me through it?

TS: Yeah, I don’t know [pause]. That’s a tough question [long pause]. I don’t know. I don’t know. I really don’t know. That’s, that’s hard. I haven’t really looked back and been like, “That’s, that’s the pitch for me” yet, so it probably hasn’t come yet.

RD: Can you describe one for me that you felt that way about?

TS: There was a changeup I threw to — I’ve said this before — to Altuve in ‘22 or something like that, ‘23? And I struck him out, and he’s a hard guy to strike out. He’s just a tough at-bat, especially against left-handed pitching. He’s a great player, too, and I kind of was coming up and earning my stripes a little bit, and that was a pretty cool pitch for me — changeup down and away in a two-strike count and executed perfectly. The metrics were great on it, too. So that’s probably the one for me.