After 13 innings, Detroit Tigers drop heartbreaker to Oakland Athletics, 7-6

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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