Detroit — Dillon Dingler stopped short of calling it a full-on panic. Slight panic is how he described it.
He thought he was going to be able to bundle up Tuesday and watch Jake Rogers catch lefty ace Tarik Skubal’s start against the Yankees. And why wouldn’t he think that? Rogers had caught 37 straight Skubal starts.
But about an hour before the game, Rogers came into the clubhouse clearly in discomfort. He’d felt his left oblique muscle tighten while taking swings the batting cage. A few minutes later it was announced that Rogers would be going on the injured list, that Tomas Nido had been summoned from Triple-A Toledo and, hello Dingler, you’re catching Skubal today.
“I mean, I found out with enough time,” Dingler said after catching a shutout in the Tigers’ 5-0 romp over the Yankees on a frigid afternoon at Comerica Park. “But the initial five minutes, it wasn’t panic but it was ‘Oh God, I’ve got to get going.’
“I was kind of thrown into it but it wasn’t too bad.”
Skubal didn’t miss a beat either.
“We just went back over the game plan with Fett (pitching coach Chris Fetter),” Skubal said after he allowed just four singles with six strikeouts in six relatively breezy innings, earning his first win of the season. “I trust those guys. I said it in spring training and I’ll say it until I’m out of breath — I trust all the guys we bring up. They do a great job.
“I don’t know if it’s AJ (Hinch, manager and former catcher) or Ryan Sienko (catching coach) or whatever combination it is with the pitching coaches, but they are really good back there.”
BOX SCORE: Tigers 5, Yankees 0
Skubal said that out of his 87 pitches, he shook off Dingler’s pitch call only once.
“And that wasn’t because it was the wrong call,” Skubal said. “It’s just what I felt in that situation and I explained that to Dillon and he agreed. He called a great game.”
With the temperate barley above freezing (34 degrees) at the start of the game, Dingler was calling for heat and Skubal obliged, firing 97-mph four-seam fastballs and sinkers, 90-mph sliders and 88-mph changeups.
And against a balanced Yankees lineup of five right-handed hitters and four lefties, they leaned heavy on his changeup (25 pitches) and four-seamer (21), getting 10 whiffs on 29 swings with those two pitches, mostly from the righties.
The lefties saw more sinkers and sliders.
“There’s expectations that come with catching Tarik,” Dingler said. “But it’s pretty easy to call a game for him if you have a game plan. Because all of his pitches move so much and it’s all directed at you. He gets ahead and he puts guys away. My part is pretty easy.”
The Yankees tried to attack Skubal early in counts, which the Dodgers had some success doing against him in the season opener. It didn’t work. He got six outs on two pitches or less and enjoyed three short innings of nine, 12 and 10 pitches.
“I asked Tarik if it was the coldest game he ever pitched in and he said no,” Hinch said. “I guess he has a little more experience than I thought with these temperatures. The sun being out helped but he still had a hard time keeping his hand warm and he was still able to execute.”
Hinch credited Skubal, too, for easing whatever anxiety Dingler may have felt with the sudden start.
“It takes Tarik’s confidence in Dillon to really sync it up quickly when the game is going,” Hinch said. “By Tarik not overreacting, Dillon is going to feel at ease and we just go into game mode. Dillon had prepared for (the Yankees), he’s catching Jack Flaherty tomorrow. The hitters weren’t going to surprise him and Tarik has full trust in him.”
And, icing on the cake, Dingler contributed to the Tigers’ home run fest to back Skubal up. His was the third of three fourth-inning home runs off Yankees right-hander Carlos Carrasco.
“I was pretty happy with that,” Dingler said, smiling.
It started with Spencer Torkelson, who had doubled and scored in the second inning. He blasted a 404-foot homer into the bullpen in left-center to start the inning. With one out, Zach McKinstry poleaxed a high sinker into the right-field seats and the Dingler followed with a line drive into the seats in left.
It’s cold in Detroit, but the bats are hot!
The @Tigers smash THREE homers in the 4th inning 💪 pic.twitter.com/lLf7inIGYe
— MLB (@MLB) April 8, 2025
The last time the Tigers hit three homers in an inning was Aug. 8, 2020, when Niko Goodrum, Miguel Cabrera and CJ Cron unloaded against former Tiger Derek Holland in the first inning.
“I don’t think we even had time to talk about it,” McKinstry said. “It happened fast. We got some good pitches to hit there, he was leaving pitches up, and we did some damage.”
Kerry Carpenter launched a 69.9 mph sweeper from lefty reliever Ryan Yarbrough into the right-field seats in the fifth. He leads the club with four homers.
“That’s what you want,” Skubal said. “It’s cold. You want it to be quick and it happened quick. That’s like the perfect way to score runs. And that’s how you do score runs in this game. It’s really hard to string together four or fives and scored a couple of runs.”
The Tigers have now won five straight games and three straight series. Flaherty goes to the mound Wednesday trying to cap a series sweep, which Skubal was poking fun at himself about after the game.
“The last time (in Seattle) I was on the mound and we were going for a sweep and I didn’t pull my weight,” Skubal said. “We’ve got a good one going tomorrow so I think we’ll do that.”
Skubal was asked what it says about the Tigers that they continue to win despite a seemingly endless flurry of injuries — Rogers and outfielder Manny Margot both went on the IL Tuesday.
“We like playing at home,” he said. “If it wasn’t for me, we would be on, what, an eight-game winning streak? When we play at home, whether it’s snowing or raining or 32 degrees, it doesn’t matter. Get us in Comerica Park and we’ll put out a good product.”