DETROIT – Tarik Skubal dialed up the intensity level in his first start at Comerica Park in two months. After striking out Colson Montgomery to escape a bases-loaded jam with one run allowed in the fifth inning, the reigning back-to-back American League Cy Young Award winner pointed to the White Sox dugout and got in a shouting match with multiple players until manager A.J. Hinch led him back into the Tigers' dugout. “I'm a competitive guy. I kind of wear my emotions out there and that's part of how I play the game,” Skubal said. “I think it's just baseball, going back and forth. It is what it is. It happened. It's over with.” Maybe it was a response to the White Sox home run celebration led by injured Sox pitcher Mike Vasil, who shouted back at him. Or maybe it was an effort to fire up his own team, which had a golden opportunity to make up ground in the AL Central with a three-game series against the division co-leaders. Maybe it was simply another chapter in the fracas-laden history of the Tigers and White Sox, including José Abreu accusing the Tigers of pitching him tight in 2021, Chris Sale once accusing Victor Martinez of stealing signs, a rookie Justin Verlander suspecting Jim Thome and the Sox of having signs, and the infamous benches-clearing brawl between the two clubs in 2000. Skubal wasn’t saying. “We're fighting tooth and nail for every win we can get, and obviously we kind of put ourselves in that position,” he said. “We've got to fight our way out of it. It's probably a perfect storm for all that stuff to happen and for me to react the way I did.” If it was the latter, it might have worked. “His intensity always fires us up,” said Kerry Carpenter, whose blooper into shallow center field turned into a go-ahead two-run double in the sixth inning, lifting Detroit to a 4-3 win Friday night at Comerica Park. “It was no different tonight. I don’t know what exactly was going on, but we’ve got Skub’s back. I know he has our back. And so, it’s pretty fun to play behind him.”
