Tarik Skubal not satisifed until his Tigers win a championship
At 59-38, Detroit owns the majors' best record and produced six All-Stars in Atlanta, the most of any team. And still, it doesn't seem the Tigers are being lauded as the title contenders that their numbers suggest.
Detroit, which leads Minnesota by 11 1/2 games in the American League Central, is spearheaded by reigning AL Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal and his 10-3 record, 2.23 ERA and league-leading 0.83 WHIP. Fellow All-Star Riley Greene has blasted 24 home runs, while a solid bullpen has helped the Tigers post four separate five-game winning streaks.
And while DraftKings likes Skubal to repeat as the Cy Young (-200), the New York Yankees - with six less wins than Detroit - are still a favorite over the Tigers to become the American League team to win the World Series (+650 to +700).
For a team on pace to win its most games since 1984 - when the Tigers went 104-58 on the way to the franchise's last World Series triumph - not much matters before October.
"The goal, to me, of baseball is to win and win championships," Skubal said during the All-Star week press conference. "So as much as this is an honor and I appreciate this moment and I'm going to have a good time over the next couple days, my focus is on winning a championship, and that's what the game's about. So I don't really think that I've accomplished much until I win a championship."
Sparking the team's turnaround from the dugout, former World Series champion manager A.J. Hinch knows better than the majority of members in the Tigers clubhouse what it takes to finish a season as the last team standing.
"I am very proud of where we're at, at the midway point of the season," said Hinch, who managed the 2017 Houston Astros to the title. "When you start looking at the series that we've won, there are a lot more series won than lost, so I think we're in a good position to have a very special summer. We just have to do a lot of work to get there. We have a good team. We have a winning team that I'll feel can stack up against anybody."
Although the club's All-Star hitters - Greene, Javier Baez, Gleyber Torres and Zack McKinstry combined to go 0-for-8, and Skubal and Casey Mize combined to allow three runs on four hits in 1 2/3 innings - the fact that Detroit, which lost 96 games three years ago, had players littered across the field is a testament to the present and future of what Tigers baseball has become.
--Jack Batten, Field Level Media
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