One in five days, Tarik Skubal gets on the mound and leads the Detroit Tigers from the mound. On other days, he chills in the dugout, sometimes getting on calls with the announcers during a live game.

On Saturday, Skubal interacted with the announcers during the game against the Cleveland Guardians. In the middle of the conversation, Tigers hitter Spencer Torkelson went deep in the second inning off Logan Allen to take a 1-0 lead. This turned out to be the only scoring shot of the night as Detroit won the game 1-0.

“Come on… bang… bang,” Skubal exclaimed while mic’d up.

Before the home run, it seemed like Skubal predicted what was coming. Even the announcers praised the reigning Cy Young pitcher for often being accurate on calling dingers.

“He’s got a hundred percent track record,” one announcer said.

Soon after, Torkelson hits his 20th home run of the season. The announcer then shouts out to Skubal for being right.

“That was as good of a call as we’ve heard from a dugout in years,” the announcer added.

Tarik Skubal among the favorites to start 2025 MLB All-Star game

Tarik Skubal may well be charting another journey to a Cy Young award as he has been excellent so far this season. He holds a 2.15 ERA after pitching 109.0 innings in 17 starts while going 10-2. He has struck out 138 batters already and has a career low WHIP of 0.83.

One of his most notable performances of the season came on June 30, when he struck out a career-high 13 batters (allowing just one hit) over seven shutout innings. His strikeout-to-walk ratio has soared this year: 9.9 K/BB. It was 6.5 in 2024.

Skubal’s Tigers teammates Riley Greene, Javier Baez and Gleyber Torres have already secured starting roles for the 2025 MLB All-Star Game on July 15 in Atlanta.

Giving Skubal a tough fight for the position to get the starting nod will be Houston Astros’ Hunter Brown, Boston Red Sox’s Garrett Crochet, Texas Rangers‘ Jacob deGrom and New York Yankees’ Max Fried.

The official roster of pitchers and reserves will be revealed on Sunday evening. If not as a starting pitcher, Skubal will most certainly be there as a reserve pitcher on the roster.