A.J. Hinch isn’t pretending Tarik Skubal’s return to Detroit will be ordinary.
The Tigers manager said Friday that game one of the weekend series against the Dodgers brings two separate realities: the awkwardness of seeing a franchise face in a different uniform, and the much harder baseball challenge that comes with trying to hit him.
“We've got to separate two things. Obviously, there's going to be the awkward weirdness of having him go to the other bullpen,” Hinch said. “I'm sure the fans and the organization will hat tip him in some way, and then you've got to separate the player out there throwing pellets to the plate.”
“We know how he's going to pitch, we know when he's good, we know what he struggles with, and you separate the player and the person.”
That separation is easier said than done for a Tigers club that has already had a rough 2026 season. Detroit entered the year with a Top-10 payroll in Major League Baseball, but now sits at 62-71 and is barely hanging around in the AL Wild Card race. A series loss at Comerica Park this week to the Tampa Bay Rays pushed the Tigers’ playoff odds to below three percent, according to FanGraphs.
Now comes another difficult twist: the Dodgers are in town, and Skubal is set to take the mound in game one. The back-to-back American League Cy Young Award winner, dealt to Los Angeles by Detroit ahead of the MLB Trade Deadline, will make his first career start against the team that drafted him in the ninth round.
Hinch said he understands the emotional weight of that matchup, especially when an old teammate is on the other side.
“I do think there's this pit in your stomach that comes with seeing your old players,” Hinch said. “We haven't done that the last couple of years, and if it has been, it's been a DFA or it's been somebody who's been replaced, not a trade like this. Tarik's tough to face and it's tougher to face him in the same year in which he wore your uniform.”
Since joining Los Angeles, Skubal has posted a 3.38 ERA in four starts, with 30 strikeouts and seven walks. Detroit’s offense will have to be sharp if it wants to solve him, though Hinch knows baseball has a way of turning even the toughest assignments into something less predictable.
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Beau Brieske and Jace Jung both sit in that conversation for different reasons. Brieske has been trending better in Triple-A, giving the Tigers a live arm to consider, while Jung brings the kind of offensive upside that can keep a player in the picture even if the defensive fit is still being sorted out. How Detroit fills those openings should say a lot about which players the front office still sees as part of the next wave. [Read more 🡒]