The Yankees fell flat on Monday, dropping Game 2 to the Royals setting up a battle in Kansas City to regain home field advantage or else their season will end. New York’s defeat meant that we had three series where everything was knotted at one apiece after two games, but there was one more series going on before the Yankees and Royals even took the field. Let’s see if the Tigers managed to make it 4-for-4 in their matchup with the Guardians.
AL Division Series Game 2 Detroit Tigers 3, Cleveland Guardians 0 (Series tied, 1-1) The Tigers have a hell of a challenge ahead of them to win this series still, but it cannot be denied that they’re the favorites whenever Tarik Skubal takes the mound. The presumptive AL Cy Young winner dominated again, tossing seven innings of shutout ball and scattered just three hits around in the process. A complete reversal of the Tigers’ fortune in Game 1, they avoided getting buried out of the gate and instead went tit-for-tat with the Guards in a good ol’ fashioned pitchers’ duel.
Skubal started off with a pair of strikeouts in the first inning, and capped off his second clean inning with another K. Cleveland never stood a chance in the third, as Skubal struck out the side, and only the leadoff batter Andrés Giménez even put up a fight, seeing eight pitches in the process. The fourth was another clean frame, which is just about the sweet spot where you can start to think about the goose eggs on the scoreboard, but the fifth gave h.