Could Detroit Tigers Ace Tarik Skubal Be Even Better With These Changes?
Detroit Tigers ace Tarik Skubal exploded on to the scene in a major way in 2024.
After flashing his immense upside at times during the 2023 campaign, Skubal put it all together last year and cruised to the American League Cy Young, earning all 30 first-place votes.
He made 31 starts with a 2.39 ERA and struck out a league-high 228 opponents in 192 innings of outstanding work. In addition to earning the Cy Young, he made the All-Star team and finished fifth place in American League MVP voting.
It would be understandable if Skubal settled in as an elite pitcher but never quite reachd those heights again, and he may not, but some of the early indications underlying his 2025 performance are that he still has more to give.
Skubal has seemed a bit spotty in his two starts so far this season, allowing a 5.91 ERA in his appearances against the Los Angeles Dodgers and Seattle Mariners.
According to Stuff+, a relatively new metric that grades a pitchers' combination of movement, velocity, angles and deception on a scale where 100 is average, like how hitters are graded via OPS+ and wRC+, Skubal actually boasts the 10th biggest jump from 2024 to 2025.
Eno Sarris, writing in The Athletic (subscription required), found Skubal's inclusion among the biggest gainers in the category to be notable.
"Tarik Skubal has also added ride to his four-seam, and his changeup has even more movement, too," Sarris wrote. "Maybe he’s even nastier this year."
According to Baseball Savant data, Skubal fared very well with those pitches in 2024, posting a 27.7% whiff rate on his four-seam fastball and a remarkable 46.2% clip on his changeup.
Those marks are both noticeably up so far this season, with his four-seamer climbing to 31.8% and the changeup up to 48.1%.
He's also upped his four-seam usage, an interesting wrinkle given how good all of his offerings are. Through two starts, he's dealt it 43.9% of the time, up from 33.2% a season ago.
It's a great sign that he's inducing more whiffs on the pitch even when he's been more predictable in its usage, as a 10 percent jump is quite significant.
Skubal may have been touched up for a few runs in both of his starts so far, but it's important to note that Stuff+ becomes more predictive of future success over a smaller simple than past basic pitching metrics.
Look for him to turn it around quickly, and it will be interesting to see how this develops down the line and if he truly has more to give this year.
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Kyle Morton has covered various sports from amateur to professional level athletics. A graduate of Fordham University, Kyle specializes in MLB and NHL coverage while having previous bylines with SB Nation, The Hockey Writers, HighSchoolOT, and Sports World News. He spent time working the beat for the NHL's Carolina Hurricanes and is an avid fan of the NHL, MLB, NFL and college basketball. Enjoys the outdoors and hiking in his free time away from sports.