Tarik Skubal Is Better Than You Think

A piece from May 2022, unpublished at the time. Image credit: Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports.

When you think of the Detroit Tigers, you think of Miggy, nightmare inducing logos, and losing. If you are the nostalgic type, you may reminisce of the 2014 rotation of Verlander, Scherzer, Price, and the gang or the deep playoff runs years prior to that. There has been renewed optimism with the recent crop of prospects; most notably Spencer Torkelson and Riley Greene this year, but the last couple years has also shown off Mize, Manning, and Skubal. Mize and Skubal both debuted in 2020 with Mize taking most of the fanfare due to his first overall pick expectations. Neither impressed in their short stints in 2020 nor in 2021 though there was progress to be built upon and Mize has been dealing with elbow issues. Our man of the hour has taken a step forward this year, living up to the prospect hype when he was the #5 Tigers prospect in 2020 and showing up the two pitchers ranked ahead of him that year.  

Year	ERA	FIP	xFIP	SIERA	CSW%	K-BB%	HR/9	GB%
2020	5.63	5.75	4.81	4.12	25.5	19.4	2.53	27.7
2021	4.34	5.09	4.06	3.92	27.4	18.5	2.11	38.5
2022	2.50	2.09	2.72	2.81	27.6	23.3	0.45	48.1

From the table above, we can see that Skubal has improved every year he’s been in the majors in every category listed with a big jump from last year to this year.  Since he was called up in 2020, he’s improved command, and steadily limited home runs while becoming a ground ball pitcher. In 2022, he’s only at 39.2 IP so far, so his home run rate is unsustainable, but even coming up to league average of 0.99 HR/9, he has halved what he was doing last year. He’s giving up barrels only 5.7% of the time and keeping hitters on their toes with a revitalized pitch mix that features an increased usage of a sinker and his slider as seen in the figure below.

The sinker has overtaken his 4-Seam as his most common 2-strike pitch and when behind in the count. This increased confidence in the pitch allows for more effective pitch tunneling and opens things up for his slider and changeup for the put away. The results of his sinker, however, show some regression is in order as it has a .375/.659 SLG/xSLG and .339/.464 WOBA/xWOBA, respectively. Even with this regression, it is performing better than his 4-Seam did last year so the transition has paid off presently. His 89 mph slider was and will continue to be his best weapon as long as he can continue to locate the 4-Seam up and use the sinker enough to keep up the tunneling illusion. 

The last point is his increased GB%, up to 48.1% and good for 16^th in the majors this year. It is well known that it’s much easier to defend ground balls and they do less damage. From the table below, ground balls had a negative run value in 2014 with line drives being the most valuable at 0.34. (Weinstein, 2014 The Hardball Times)

Skubal has only improved in this regard over the last three years and has shown the ability this year to continue the trend. He’s inducing anything but solid contact with a solid % of 2.8 and making hitters either get on top of the ball or under it which is a great indication of pitch mix and keeping the hitters on their toes. If he continues to pound the zone keeping eyes up on the 4-Seam and whipping them into the dirt with the slider/change he will continue this breakout even with spin rates that are below league average. The renewed command and control allows this breakout to persist and you won’t want to miss out while you can.