The Guardians' backs are against the wall after Tarik Skubal’s dazzling start

The bad news for the Cleveland Guardians is that Tarik Skubal was nearly perfect in Detroit’s 2-1 win on Tuesday in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series between the two teams. 

The good news is that he’s not pitching tomorrow. 

While Skubal’s stellar start means that tomorrow is a must-win game for the Guardians, he’s the best pitcher in baseball and is on pace to win his second straight Cy Young. 

Sure, the Guardians were able to get to him last week, but it was on the back of infield hits and errors. Although they were able to scratch a run across using the same methods on Tuesday, that’s not a sustainable way to generate runs. 

The Guardians lineup looked absolutely lost against Tarik Skubal on Tuesday

While the Guardians’ performance tomorrow comes with the caveat that they were facing off against Skubal, it was also a reminder that they finished the regular season with the second-lowest team OPS in baseball. 

The Guardians’ lone run against Skubal came in the fourth inning on a chopper off the plate where Skubal had to turn his back toward the plate to field the ball and wasn’t able to throw home in time to nab Angel Martínez.

Meanwhile, the Tigers scored their first run off Gavin Williams in the first inning on a two-out single from Spencer Torkelson that was set up by a Johnathan Rodríguez error. Williams was able to settle in after that inning, however, and held the Tigers scoreless for the next six innings.

Detroit scored the eventual game-winning run in the seventh inning after Riley Greene opened the inning with an RBI double off Williams before coming around to score on a sacrifice bunt from Zach McKinstry against Hunter Gaddis. 

The Guardians next best chance to score came in the eighth inning when they got a runner to second with two outs off Skubal, but Will Vest came in and promptly got Bo Naylor to ground out to first base. 

While Williams took the loss on the mound thanks to two unearned runs, he looked every bit the ace. He scattered five hits across his 6+ innings of work to go along with eight strikeouts and, most importantly, only one walk. 

Cleveland’s bullpen also answered the call. Gaddis limited the damage after the aforementioned bunt across his 1 2/3 innings, Erik Sabrowski got Kerry Carpenter to strike out in his 1/3 of an inning and Cade Smith worked around some traffic to get out of the ninth scoreless. 

The Guardians had a golden opportunity to score in the ninth inning when José Ramírez got to third base with no one out thanks to an error from Javier Báez, but Vest was able to get out of it thanks to a strikeout, groundout and pop out. 

The good news for the Guardians is that they’re going to turn to their stopper in Tanner Bibee tomorrow while the Tigers will counter with Casey Mize. And Skubal will be sitting on the bench in a sweatshirt. 

At this point, that’s all the Guardians can ask for.