Tarik Skubal, Tigers fail to learn Yankees' lesson in brutal fifth inning vs. Dodgers

Going into the bottom of the fifth on Opening Day against the Dodgers, the Tigers were hanging onto a 2-1 lead by a thread. Already, concerns about this team and the imbalance in the roster were starting to be proven correct.

Ace Tarik Skubal gave up a solo homer to Tommy Edman in the bottom of the second, but was otherwise holding strong, while the offense was squandering way too many opportunities on the bases. Detroit's two runs came on a wild pitch with the bases loaded and a sac fly, again with the bases loaded, but the Tigers weren't able to make anything significant happen in those prime scenarios.

Edman's homer wasn't a huge red flag, but Skubal also wasn't quite fooling Dodgers hitters the way he usually fools hitters; he'd only recorded two strikeouts through four innings.

He started to shake going into the fifth, when he gave up a one-out single to Andy Pages, who was replaced by Shohei Ohtani at first when Ohtani grounded into a force out that had Pages out at second. Mookie Betts followed, and Skubal did something he almost never did: he walked a hitter, and on four straight pitches, at that.

Teoscar Hernández, replacing Freddie Freeman batting third in the lineup for the night, stepped up with two men on, and then smashed the very first pitch he saw, a 96.6 MPH fastball that was basically middle-middle.

Tarik Skubal's Opening Day start for Tigers goes awry after questionable decision with Mookie Betts

Skubal had been making it clear that he wasn't afraid of the Dodgers lineup — his first pitch to Shohei Ohtani was a fastball right down the center that Ohtani grounded to first for an out — but his fastball didn't have the same zip by the fifth, and Hernández jumped on it.

It's also hard to believe that his walk to Betts (who is almost 20 pounds lighter after a violent stomach illness that lasted over a week) was anything but intentional; Skubal notoriously hates walking batters, and those four pitches were too conspicuously off the mark for a guy who had also been dotting his slider throughout the evening so far.

This is pretty much exactly what happened to the Yankees last year in Game 1 of the World Series, when Nestor Cortes walked Betts to get to Freddie Freeman, who hit that immediately-iconic walk-off grand slam that put the Dodgers up 1-0 in the series.

The Dodgers lineup is infuriating — you give one guy a free pass, another massive threat comes up after him. Betts was easily the better batter for Skubal to try to attack, but a questionable decision all around led to a 4-2 lead for LA and marked the end of Skubal's Opening Day start.