The Tampa Bay Rays showed interest in Eduardo Rodriguez leading up to Tuesday’s trade deadline, but when the Detroit Tigers maintained their high asking price, the Rays pivoted to a different pitcher from the American League Central.
Right-hander Aaron Civale, whom the Rays acquired from the Cleveland Guardians for prospect Kyle Manzardo, took the mound Saturday at Comerica Park, entering with a 7-0 record and 2.06 ERA in 10 career starts against the Tigers.
The Tigers finally had a breakthrough in their 11th matchup with Civale — handing him the loss with three runs on nine hits in 4⅓ innings — en route to a 4-2 win over the Rays in the second of three games in the series.
“Really good at-bats,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said. “We made him work a ton. He was at 60 pitches through three (innings). Making him work, making him make a few mistakes and capitalizing on them.”
The offense from the Tigers (49-61) backed up a stellar pitching performance from left-hander Tarik Skubal, who allowed one unearned run on six hits and one walk with six strikeouts across 5⅓ innings.
“He was incredible,” Hinch said. “He was laser focused. He was locked in. Some of the best stuff he’s featured pre- and post-injury, and he was in attack mode. You could see the adrenaline. The way he’s pitching, with his energy, his focus and his grit, every good word you can say about a guy, he has it.”
Despite an early deficit, the Tigers answered the Rays in the second inning with back-to-back singles from Miguel Cabrera and Andy Ibáñez. Back-to-back strikeouts, though, put the scoring opportunity in jeopardy.
Jake Rogers saved the Tigers with a two-strike, two-out single off Civale’s up-and-away fastball. The shot into the outfield scored Cabrera from second and tied the game, 1-1, in the second inning.
“After you get punched, you want to punch back,” Rogers said. “I wanted to come through and get the ball rolling. Once you get one (run), you open the floodgates and good things happen. We battled back.”
Rogers struck again in the fourth inning.
He followed Ibáñez’s single and Akil Baddoo’s double by tagging a first-pitch sinker from Civale into left field for a two-run double. His 10th double of the season put the Tigers in front, 3-1.
“I was trying to jump him and get a good pitch to hit early,” Rogers said. “He lives around the corners pretty well, but he left a couple over the heart (of the plate).”
The Tigers chased Civale, who threw 90 pitches, on Kerry Carpenter’s double with one out in the fifth inning. Right-handed reliever Kevin Kelly replaced Civale and retired back-to-back batters — Cabrera (strikeout) and Ibáñez (popout) — to strand Carpenter in scoring position.
“You got to make guys work and not expand the zone and not concede to his timing disruptions,” Hinch said. “He will throw changeups and cutters and the slow curveball. We hung in there from the very beginning.”
In the sixth inning, Baddoo crushed a solo home run against righty reliever Robert Stephenson. He worked a full count and demolished Stephenson’s sixth-pitch 86.9 mph cutter with a 111.7 mph exit velocity for a 429-foot blast that dinged high off the right-field foul pole.
Baddoo took his time and watched the ball fly, then circled the bases as his sixth homer put the Tigers ahead, 4-1.
No Skubal diving
Skubal received run support and dominated on the mound.
He stayed calm with runners on base, didn’t leave too many pitches over the middle of the strike zone and tossed a season-high 88 pitches (60 strikes) in the sixth start of his return from left flexor tendon surgery.
Skubal now owns a 3.67 ERA.
“I thought I did a good job of attacking guys,” Skubal said. “I thought Rog called a great game. I pitched to my strengths really, really well and was able to execute some pitches. It was good.”
The outing didn’t start as expected because of a pair of errors by center fielder Riley Greene in the second inning. Fielding errors on back-to-back balls in play turned singles into “doubles” — single, then advance to second base on the error — for both Harold Ramírez and Manuel Margot.
The rare mistakes from Greene, considered an above-average center fielder, allowed the Rays to take a 1-0 lead.
“It’s one inning,” Skubal said. “In two innings, I’ve given up nine runs (out of 11 runs this season). You have to limit those innings, and you could see it kind of start to go in the second (inning), so to get out of there with only one (run) was huge, for my confidence and our team.”
From that point on, Skubal — who encouraged Greene in the dugout after the inning — cruised past the Rays. He induced a key double play against Wander Franco in the third inning and avoided trouble following a two-out single from Rene Pinto in the fifth inning.
He exited after a single and a walk with one out in the sixth inning.
Skubal threw 36 four-seam fastballs (41%), 18 changeups (20%), 17 sliders (19%), 11 sinkers (13%) and six knuckle curves (7%). He generated 15 whiffs with six fastballs, five changeups, three sliders and one sinker.
His fastball averaged 96.2 mph.
“They have nine righties and some good righties that handle left-handed pitching really well,” Skubal said. “You got to have everything. There’s a reason that they’re a game back (of first place) in the AL East. You got to be able to execute some pitches.”
Oh, that bullpen
Right-handed reliever José Cisnero took over for Skubal with one out in the sixth inning, inheriting Franco (single) and Randy Arozarena (walk) on the bases. He struck out pinch-hitter Luke Raley, then plunked Curtis Mead to load the bases.
Cisnero struck out Margot with a down-and-away slider for the third out in the sixth, though, to escape the jam. In celebration, he backpedaled his way off the mound in his return to the dugout.
The Rays cut the Tigers’ lead to 4-2 with a run off Cisnero in the seventh. Righty reliever Jason Foley got the final two outs in that inning, setting up left-handed reliever Tyler Holton for a scoreless eighth inning.
Right-handed reliever Alex Lange walked two batters, got Yandy Díaz to ground into a double play and then walked another batter to put two runners on base for ex-Tiger Isaac Paredes.
“We got to keep pushing him and keep working at it,” Hinch said. “It’s always tough to take a guy out at the end of the game, but we got to have more strikes. It’s simple, but it’s not easy to execute, especially when you got the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
Lange threw just six of his 20 pitches for strikes, and only three them landed inside the strike zone.
“He hasn’t been in a good place for a couple of outings,” Hinch said, “and we needed to get to the finish line in a different way.”
Hinch turned to righty reliever Beau Brieske as Lange’s replacement to face Paredes with two outs. Brieske struck out Paredes with an elevated 95.9 mph four-seam fastball to end the game.
It was Brieske’s first save in his professional career.
Contact Evan Petzold at epetzold@freepress.com or follow him on Twitter @EvanPetzold.