Detroit – Something about that home cooking.
Tarik Skubal finally made his 2026 Comerica Park debut after three straight road starts and he did what he typically does in the spacious confines – dominate.
Skubal took a no-hitter into the sixth inning, helping the Tigers complete the three-game sweep of the Miami Marlins, 8-2, before a crowd of 26,768 Sunday.
BOX SCORE: Tigers 8, Marlins 2
How good has Skubal been at Comerica?
Last season he was 9-1 with an American League-low 2.13 ERA in 16 starts here. And since the beginning of 2024, he was 19-2, a best-in-baseball .905 winning percentage, with a league-low 2.06 ERA.
All those numbers got better Sunday.
It was clear from the outset that he had his Cy Young-worthy stuff. He breezed through the first four innings, facing the minimum 12 hitters. He erased a leadoff walk to Austin Slater (foreshadowing) in the fourth by getting Trenton-native Jakob Marsee to hit into a 4-6-3 double-play.
He was mixing 96 and 97-mph four-seam fastballs and sinkers with well-located changeups and 90-mph sliders. He got 11 whiffs on 44 swings and 18 called strikes.
Marlins’ first baseman Connor Norby got the whole package in one at-bat in the second inning. After missing with a four-seamer, Skubal carved him up with a sinker in, a backdoor slider and a dastardly changeup that floated away and out of the zone – chase strike three.
After getting the first two outs, Slater, who was in camp with the Tigers this spring, blooped a single to shallow center to break up Skubal’s no-hit bid.
The Marlins scratched across a run in the seventh. Marsee, who had a huge crowd of family and friends at each of the four games and had been 0 for 10 in the series, led off with a triple to right field and scored on a sacrifice fly.
Skubal left to a standing ovation with two outs in the seventh, having allowed just the one run on two hits with seven strikeouts.
Skub out here makin’ plays 😮💨 pic.twitter.com/BYqFATaL5f
— Detroit Tigers (@tigers) April 12, 2026
The pitching duel with Marlins’ ace Sandy Alcantara didn’t materialize.
Dillon Dingler nixed that storyline in the first inning with a 404-foot, three-run homer. With two outs, Colt Keith and Riley Greene singled. Alcantara got two strikes on Dingler and tried to bust a right-on-right changeup in on his hands.
The pitch stayed over the plate and Dingler launched it over the Tigers’ bullpen in left for his third homer.
Rookie Kevin McGonigle hit a rocket single off an Alcantara fastball in the third inning. So when he came to bat in the fifth, the last thing you expected was for Alcantara to throw a first-pitch heater.
McGonigle did. He drove a 97-mph four-seamer 408 feet into the seats in right for his first big-league home run. The ball left his bat at 108.8 mph.
The 21-year-old who never stepped foot in Triple-A ended up with three hits and a walk, raising his average to .322 and his OPS to .920. He’s produced multiple hits in four of 16 games.
The Tigers sent nine hitters to the plate in a three-run sixth. Kerry Carpenter delivered a two-run homer, slicing a sweeper on a line into the right-field seats.
Alcantara had allowed three runs total in his first three starts. He was charged with seven in six innings Sunday.
The Tigers (7-9) will open a three-game series against Central Division rival Kansas City on Tuesday.
This story will be updated.
@cmccosky
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Tarik Skubal, Tigers sweep Marlins with pitching-hitting power display
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