Tarik Skubal, Tigers sweep Marlins with pitching-hitting power display

Detroit – Something about that home cooking.

Tarik Skubal finally made his 2026 Comerica Park debut after three straight road starts and he did what he typically does in the spacious confines – dominate.

Skubal took a no-hitter into the sixth inning, helping the Tigers complete the three-game sweep of the Miami Marlins, 8-2, before a crowd of 26,768 Sunday.

BOX SCORE: Tigers 8, Marlins 2

How good has Skubal been at Comerica?

Last season he was 9-1 with an American League-low 2.13 ERA in 16 starts here. And since the beginning of 2024, he was 19-2, a best-in-baseball .905 winning percentage, with a league-low 2.06 ERA.

All those numbers got better Sunday.

Tigers pitcher Tarik Skubal delivers a pitch in the first inning as the Detroit Tigers take on the Miami Marlins at Comerica Park on April 12, 2026 in Detroit.

It was clear from the outset that he had his Cy Young-worthy stuff. He breezed through the first four innings, facing the minimum 12 hitters. He erased a leadoff walk to Austin Slater (foreshadowing) in the fourth by getting Trenton-native Jakob Marsee to hit into a 4-6-3 double-play.

He was mixing 96 and 97-mph four-seam fastballs and sinkers with well-located changeups and 90-mph sliders. He got 11 whiffs on 44 swings and 18 called strikes.

Marlins’ first baseman Connor Norby got the whole package in one at-bat in the second inning. After missing with a four-seamer, Skubal carved him up with a sinker in, a backdoor slider and a dastardly changeup that floated away and out of the zone – chase strike three.

After getting the first two outs, Slater, who was in camp with the Tigers this spring, blooped a single to shallow center to break up Skubal’s no-hit bid.

The Marlins scratched across a run in the seventh. Marsee, who had a huge crowd of family and friends at each of the four games and had been 0 for 10 in the series, led off with a triple to right field and scored on a sacrifice fly.

Skubal left to a standing ovation with two outs in the seventh, having allowed just the one run on two hits with seven strikeouts.

The pitching duel with Marlins’ ace Sandy Alcantara didn’t materialize.

Dillon Dingler nixed that storyline in the first inning with a 404-foot, three-run homer. With two outs, Colt Keith and Riley Greene singled. Alcantara got two strikes on Dingler and tried to bust a right-on-right changeup in on his hands.

The pitch stayed over the plate and Dingler launched it over the Tigers’ bullpen in left for his third homer.

Rookie Kevin McGonigle hit a rocket single off an Alcantara fastball in the third inning. So when he came to bat in the fifth, the last thing you expected was for Alcantara to throw a first-pitch heater.

McGonigle did. He drove a 97-mph four-seamer 408 feet into the seats in right for his first big-league home run. The ball left his bat at 108.8 mph.

The 21-year-old who never stepped foot in Triple-A ended up with three hits and a walk, raising his average to .322 and his OPS to .920. He's produced multiple hits in four of 16 games.

The Tigers sent nine hitters to the plate in a three-run sixth. Kerry Carpenter delivered a two-run homer, slicing a sweeper on a line into the right-field seats.

Alcantara had allowed three runs total in his first three starts. He was charged with seven in six innings Sunday.

The Tigers (7-9) will open a three-game series against Central Division rival Kansas City on Tuesday.

This story will be updated.

Chris.McCosky@detroitnews.com

@cmccosky

This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Tarik Skubal, Tigers sweep Marlins with pitching-hitting power display