Detroit, MI
After 13 innings, Detroit Tigers drop heartbreaker to Oakland Athletics, 7-6
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Detroit Tigers left-hander Tarik Skubal, the frontrunner to win the American League Cy Young Award, didn’t add another win to his candidacy as the best pitcher in baseball.
Even worse, the Tigers failed to add another win to their AL wild-card race in a heartbreaking loss to the Oakland Athletics.
The Tigers lost, 7-6, to the Athletics on Friday in the first of three games in the series at Oakland Coliseum. Skubal surrendered two runs and couldn’t complete the sixth inning, but the Tigers forced extra innings — only to lose in the 13th on a walk-off single by Seth Brown.
“That was a winnable game,” manager A.J. Hinch told reporters in Oakland. “We kind of did it to ourselves in a couple of situations. Games get a little bit crazy here, and with extra innings and all the extra runners and things like that. It’s a tough loss.”
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For the first time since Aug. 2, the Tigers (71-71) lost a game in which Skubal started to snap a streak of five wins in Skubal outings. The loss sends the Tigers to 5½ out of the third and final American League wild-card spot, with 20 games remaining.
This one took four rounds of extra innings.
In the 10th inning, the Tigers and Athletics traded runs, with Colt Keith’s RBI single off right-handed reliever Mason Miller with two outs in the top half and Brent Rooker’s RBI double off right-handed reliever Brenan Hanifee in the bottom half.
In the 11th inning, the Tigers and Athletics traded two runs, with Parker Meadows’ two-run double off left-handed reliever Scott Alexander with two outs in the top half and Brown’s two-run home run off right-handed reliever Shelby Miller in the bottom half.
Brown, a left-handed pinch-hitter, crushed Miller’s middle-middle slider with two strikes.
“It didn’t change a lot because we take Shelby on lefties the way he’s pitched against lefties,” Hinch said. “I know he’s had a couple of tough at-bats, but generally speaking, he’s been really tough there. Just one pitch to Brown, and the game continued.”
In the 12th inning, the Tigers and Athletics traded runs with Riley Greene’s RBI single off right-handed reliever Grant Holman in the top half and Rooker’s sacrifice fly off right-handed reliever Beau Brieske in the bottom half.
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The teams were tied, 6-6, entering the 13th inning.
Meadows, who hit a go-ahead grand slam in the ninth inning of Friday’s win over the San Diego Padres, struck out swinging with the bases loaded and two outs in the top of the 13th.
The Meadows strikeout accounted for Holman’s only strikeout in two innings of work.
The Athletics didn’t miss in their opportunity with one out in the bottom of the 13th, as Brown turned on an inside fastball from Brieske for a walk-off single down the first-base line and into right field, driving in the free runner from second base.
It was Brown’s second big hit in three innings.
In the loss, the Tigers used 13 position players and eight pitchers.
Meadows went 2-for-7 with four strikeouts; Greene went 4-for-6 with one strikeout; Keith went 1-for-6 with two strikeouts; Spencer Torkelson went 0-for-6 with four strikeouts; Trey Sweeney went 0-for-6 with two strikeouts; Jake Rogers went 0-for-4 with two walks and two strikeouts. Torkelson has struck out 26 times in 59 trips to the plate — a 48% strikeout rate — in his past 14 games.
The game lasted three hours, 34 minutes.
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Tarik Skubal Day
Skubal shut down the Athletics until the fourth inning, when Lawrence Butler and Rooker hit back-to-back singles. With one out, JJ Bleday hit a ball off the wall in center field, but for a moment, it looked like Meadows caught the ball.
The moment of uncertainty was enough to fool the Athletics, with Butler stopping at third base, Bleday stopping at second base and Rooker getting caught in between them. The Tigers tagged out Rooker in between the bases.
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Skubal then stranded two runners in scoring position by striking out ex-Tiger Tyler Nevin, dropping in an 89.6 mph changeup at the bottom rail of the strike zone. When Nevin whiffed, Skubal unleashed a scream in celebration as he backpedaled off the mound.
The Athletics, though, finally scored in the fifth inning, as Zack Gelof doubled with one out and Jacob Wilson tripled with two outs. On the triple, the ball dropped inside the foul line in right field, just beyond the reach of a sliding Kerry Carpenter’s glove, to tie the game, 1-1.
In the sixth inning, ex-Tiger Daz Cameron put the Athletics ahead, 2-1, when he hit an RBI single off Skubal’s sinker — located middle-middle — with two strikes and two outs. The single from Cameron chased Skubal from his outing after 96 pitches.
Skubal has a 2.53 ERA in 28 starts.
Facing the Athletics, Skubal allowed two runs on nine hits with zero walks and seven strikeouts. The 27-year-old generated 18 whiffs on 48 swings, including 11 whiffs on 18 swings against his changeup.
Before extra innings
The Tigers scored one run apiece in the fifth and seventh innings.
In the fifth, three singles in a row from Meadows, Jace Jung and Greene chased right-hander Mitch Spence from his start. The single from Greene put the Tigers ahead, 1-0.
In the seventh, Greene — a left-handed hitter — ripped a two-strike, two-out double off left-handed reliever Hogan Harris. The Tigers pinch-hit Matt Vierling for Carpenter, but the Athletics countered by bringing in right-handed reliever Michel Otañez.
The decision backfired.
Otañez threw two wild pitches within his first six pitches to Vierling. The first wild pitch allowed Greene to advance to third, and the second wild pitch allowed Greene to score for a 2-2 tie.
Contact Evan Petzold at epetzold@freepress.com or follow him @EvanPetzold.
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was wrong to determine Michigan met federal health and environmental standards for ozone pollution or smog in the Detroit area in 2023, a federal appeals court judge has ruled.
U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Helene White on Dec. 5 issued a split decision in a case about how environmental regulators measured Detroit air quality in 2022, when wildfire smoke drifted over Detroit and affected the air quality monitor readings for a few days in June.
Michigan considered those days “exceptional events” because of the wildfire smoke and didn’t include the high ozone pollution readings in its calculation to the EPA.
With those days tossed, the state was able to argue in 2023 that Michigan met federal air quality standards for ground-level ozone pollution. The seven-county Metro Detroit region had previously been out of compliance with the ozone standards.
The Sierra Club sued, arguing the wildfire smoke did not meaningfully change ozone readings and that the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy failed to analyze how local pollution sources contributed to the ozone levels on those days. The environmental advocacy group also challenged the EPA’s finding that the region met federal standards for ozone pollution.
White determined the exceptional events designation was appropriate, siding against the Sierra Club in deciding the EPA and EGLE correctly analyzed the smoke’s impact on ozone readings in June 2022.
She sided against EPA in deciding the EPA was wrong to put Michigan back into attainment for ground-level ozone without Michigan adopting control measures that would cut volatile organic compounds, which contribute to ozone pollution.
EPA determined the Detroit area was out of attainment for ground-level ozone on April 13, 2022. Michigan regulators did not impose control technologies for ozone-causing pollutants by the deadline in early 2023. Instead, they asked EPA to redesignate the area as in attainment with the air quality rules.
Michigan was obligated to implement control technologies even though it had submitted a redesignation request, White said in her order. Control technologies include efforts to reduce volatile organic compounds from being released from manufacturing plants and industrial sources, according to EPA documents.
Sierra Club member and Detroit environmental justice activist Dolores Leonard cheered the outcome of the case.
“Without this victory, EPA’s decisions would have let Michigan avoid the rules needed to reduce pollution and keep the air we breathe safe,” Leonard said. “At a time when asthma rates are rising in Detroit, especially in Black communities, that’s unacceptable. With the backing of this federal court decision, our community will continue to push the state of Michigan to take much-needed action to relieve ozone pollution in this area.”
The Clean Air Act requires those pollution control measures to be implemented even after the EPA puts an area back into attainment to ensure the air quality remains healthy, said Nick Leonard, executive director of Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, which argued the Sierra Club’s case.
White’s order means the EGLE will have to reapply for the attainment of the ozone standard, Leonard said.
“At the very least, I would say they have to correct the legal deficiency, which was that they didn’t enact the pollution control rules that are typically required for areas that are in non-attainment for this long,” he said.
The EPA is reviewing the decision, its press office said. The office did not respond to a question about whether it would ask Michigan to adopt volatile organic compound control measures as a result of White’s decision.
The EGLE also is reviewing the ruling, spokesman Dale George said.
“While EGLE was not a party to the case and is not able to speak in detail about the legal outcome, we were encouraged that the court supported the use of exceptional events demonstrations and acknowledged the sound science behind EGLE’s determination that the Detroit area met the health-based ozone standard,” George said.
Leonard said he was disappointed but not surprised that White ruled against the Sierra Club’s arguments that EGLE and the EPA did not correctly account for wildfire smoke’s impact on ozone readings in 2022.
That issue is going to plague communities as climate change causes northern wildfires to become more common and kick smoke into Michigan, he predicted.
“If we start to essentially cut out bad air quality days because of the claim they were partially influenced by wildfire smoke … , you create this disconnect between the regulatory systems that are meant to protect people and the actual air pollution that people are breathing,” Leonard said.
ckthompson@detroitnews.com
The deal, which is pending a physical and has not been confirmed
Detroit, MI
Detroit-area teen charged in carjacking at Applebee’s restaurant bound over to circuit court
A 15-year-old boy who is accused of carjacking a woman last month at an Applebee’s in Roseville, Michigan, is heading to circuit court after waiving his preliminary examination, according to the Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office.
The teen is charged with one count of carjacking, third-degree fleeing a police officer, two counts of malicious destruction of personal property, assault with a dangerous weapon, assaulting/resisting/obstructing a police officer, operating without a license and failure to stop after a collision.
The teen appeared for a probable cause hearing on Dec. 10 and waived his right to a preliminary examination. He will be arraigned on Jan. 5, 2026.
He remains in at the Macomb County Juvenile Center under a $250,000 cash/surety bond. If he posts bond, he is ordered to wear a GPS tether, be restricted to his mother’s house and have no contact with the victim, witnesses or Applebee’s.
Prosecutors allege that on Nov. 24, 2025, the teen forcibly took a woman’s 2016 Jeep Patriot in the restaurant’s parking lot. The teen took off in the vehicle and crashed it on Gratiot Avenue.
“The allegations and charges in this matter are serious. Carjacking is a violent offense that carries life-altering consequences for victims and offenders alike,” Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido said in a statement. “To the young people of Macomb County, understand that the choices you make today will determine the path available to you tomorrow. We want every youth in this community to succeed, but that starts with stepping away from dangerous decisions before they lead to irreversible outcomes.”
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