CHICAGO (AP) — Tarik Skubal earned his major league-leading 15th win, and the Detroit Tigers handed the Chicago White Sox their 99th loss with a 13-4 victory on Saturday night.
Matt Vierling, Colt Keith and Zach McKinstry homered for Detroit, which won for the third time in four games. Keith and Jake Rogers each had three RBIs, and Vierling scored three times.
Skubal (15-4) struck out eight in five innings. He was charged with three runs and eight hits.
“Tarik has been incredible the entire year,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “It shows he’s human a little bit and had a couple things not go his way. We’ll take that outing, especially when we put up the offense that we did.”
Skubal, who also leads the majors with a 2.58 ERA, experienced issues with gripping the ball. The temperature was 86 at first pitch on a humid night.
“I’ve thrown in hotter games and more humid games. I don’t know what was going on with the balls today, but I wasn’t a fan of them,” Skubal said. “I’ve never thrown out that many balls before. I don’t really want that to be a story either. That’s not an excuse or anything. It happens. You’ve got to learn to pitch around some things and deal with it because it’s not going to be the last time that happens.”
Corey Julks had three hits for the White Sox, who moved closer to setting a franchise record for most losses in a season. Chicago dropped a club-worst 106 games in 1970.
The major league record for most losses in a season belongs to the Cleveland Spiders, who went 20-134 in 1899. The 1962 New York Mets hold the modern record of 120 losses.
“I don’t think we try to focus on that,” Julks said about approaching 100 losses. “We just go day by day. As we’ve been playing, I think everything is starting to come along a little more, but you’ve got to show up ready to play each day and play hard.”
Ky Bush (0-3) yielded five runs and eight hits in three innings for Chicago (31-99) in his fourth career start.
The White Sox fell to 3-10 under interim manager Grady Sizemore, who replaced the fired Pedro Grifol on Aug. 8.
“I don’t have to worry about keeping these guys going,” Sizemore said. “They’ve been fighting. They’ve been putting together good at-bats, playing good defense. The effort is there. It’s just some days we don’t execute. Sometimes we just get beat.”
Vierling opened Detroit’s four-run third inning with his 15th homer. Andy Ibáñez walked and scored when Bush tumbled off the mound on Keith’s groundout.
Bush stayed in the game and yielded an RBI double to Rogers and a run-scoring single to Parker Meadows.
The White Sox responded with three runs in the bottom half against Skubal. Julks, Luis Robert Jr. and Andrew Vaughn each hit an RBI single.
“I gave up eight hits, seven singles,” Skubal said. “I think one of them was hit hard. I think Vaughn’s was hit hard. Everything else was kinda through holes, found holes. That’s the game of baseball.”
But the Tigers (64-66) began to pull away with four runs in the fourth, helped by Touki Toussaint issuing three consecutive walks to begin the inning. Rogers’ two-run single lifted his team to a 9-3 lead.
Keith and McKinstry each hit a two-run homer off John Brebbia in the ninth as fans began to boo.
TRAINER’S ROOM
Tigers: RHP Casey Mize (left hamstring strain) allowed three runs in 4 2/3 innings in a rehab start for Triple-A Toledo.
UP NEXT
RHP Jonathan Cannon (2-7, 4.26 ERA) will start Sunday for the White Sox. Beau Brieske (2-3, 4.24 ERA) will be the opener for Detroit.
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