Baseball fans recognize the unwritten rule about teammates avoiding the starting pitcher in the dugout during a no-hitter. Exceptions being the catcher and the coaching staff.
It is an anti-jinxing measure, and also a way to not add pressure to the moment. Even if you’re not a terribly superstitious player, steering clear of the pitcher is a way to just “Let them focus!” It also helps to deflect potential blame for the no-no bid failing, or the outcome going sideways. The butterfly effect is real, people.
Fans might be less aware of a related Major League Baseball custom: teammates also leaving the pitcher alone entirely on the day they start. Before the game for sure, and usually during it, up to the point they exit.
Many famous pitchers through the years earned reputations for being all business on game days. Max Scherzer probably wouldn’t want to hear from close family before the game on days he pitches. In the clubhouse, the headphones worn by Roy Halladay functioned like a cocoon. Nobody in their right mind went up to Randy Johnson. And Jack Morris? The mustache alone was like hanging a sign around his face that said: “Keep Out.” On days he pitched, Bob Gibson was said to be like the guy in the “Old West” TV commercials who shot a man just for snorin’ too loud. Catcher Tim McCarver said he even dreaded going to the mound with Gibson standing on it.
While the practice seems less common now than in the old-school days, starting-pitcher avoidance remains a real thing, even in these ethically shifting times. The clubhouse default remains: Don’t talk to the starting pitcher unless you absolutely have to. Or if they signal it’s OK to. Today, a major-league clubhouse has two kinds of starting pitchers: headphone guys, and the more conversant kind.
Detroit Tigers left-hander Tarik Skubal, the best pitcher in the league today at 28 years old, typically gets right to the point once he’s on the mound. Nobody generates more 0-2 counts, for example. As for his demeanor in the clubhouse, the dugout and even the field sometimes, Skubal seems much more open to shooting the breeze.
Tarik Skubal has allowed an OPS of just .318 (612 PA’s) with two-strikes since last season, best among qualified SPs in MLB; League Avg: .481.#RepDetroit pic.twitter.com/RsWERwOBmX
— Inside Edge (@IE_MLB) June 6, 2025
Skubal said in a recent interview with Pitcher List that he aligns with the newer school, and is a regular Chatty Charlie on days that he starts. A Talkative Tarik. On start days, there’s not much alone time for Skubal when he otherwise might be getting “into the zone.” He has enough time to make time for anyone.
“I like to have fun playing this game,” Skubal said. “On the days I go, I’m having fun. I get in the clubhouse three hours before the game, or whatever, and I talk to guys. I can’t do the whole ’sit by yourself’ thing, the whole ‘leave me alone’ thing. That’s not who I am.”
Skubal said he’d be the same way in a no-hitter, if one ever came up. Twice this season, he’s reached the sixth inning with a perfect game, the furthest he’s gotten as a professional. He was out there talking.
“I am probably going to be talking to people throughout anything,” Skubal said. “I’m going to keep doing the same thing.”
Unless, of course, someone else was the one throwing the no-hitter. Skubal was on the bench in July 2023 when Matt Manning, Jason Foley and Alex Lange combined for the Tigers’ ninth franchise no-hitter. While not exactly the same animal as a solo no-no, Skubal reverted to his primeval ballplayer ways with history on the line.
“Now, if I’m on the bench and someone’s doing something, I’ll keep doing the same thing I’ve been doing,” Skubal said. “I’m a little superstitious when someone else is going, but when I’m going, I’m not very superstitious. If it’s someone else, I’ll make sure to keep doing the same thing I’ve been doing for the last five, six, seven, innings. I think that’s just baseball, right?”
Skubal didn’t always defy convention about how he acts on start days. The perfect game on his record came in 2014 when he was in high school. At that time, later while in college at Seattle, and into his early pro years, Skubal put up a wall on days that he pitched. He climbed into headphone cocoons, initiated no conversations and acted unfriendly if anyone tried talking to him.
Skubal found it counterproductive. And not fun in the least.
“It was actually more mentally exhausting for me to do that than it was just to be myself and talk to guys, do crosswords, sit on the couch with guys, watch TV,” Skubal said.
It was what other starting pitchers did, so Skubal did it, too.
“When I first got to the big leagues, that was what I thought you had to do as a starting pitcher,” Skubal said. “And it just didn’t work for me. It didn’t work. I had my headphones on, and it actually made my brain race more.”
Being a headphone guy actually made Skubal a worse pitcher, he thought.
“By the time I’m supposed to be out there competing, I’d be mentally exhausted,” Skubal said. “When I needed to be the most locked in, I felt like I was the most tired.”
Around the time Skubal underwent surgery on the flexor tendon in his left elbow in August 2022, he decided to quit being a headphone guy on game days and start being himself every day. Rather than treating a game day like an anxious countdown to blastoff, Skubal changed the timeline of how he prepared for each start. Changing it up made it seem less like he was cramming for a test.
“I was like: ‘Hey, I’m done doing that. I’m just going to enjoy the game and have fun,’” Skubal said. “And then, my preparation that I put in four or five days in between starts — just trust that.”
It is not just Skubal’s own opinion that he’s up for a friendly chat on start days — his teammates confirmed it. Tigers catcher Jake Rogers said that anyone on the team “can go up to him like anybody else on his start days, and talk to him and just have a normal conversation.
“He just has fun with the game, and that’s how you should take it.”
Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said Skubal’s teammates enjoy, appreciate and likely benefit from having Skubal present as the same kind of approachable person every day. Skubal is not only the reigning AL Cy Young Award winner and a frontrunner for more awards this season, but he’s also a leader, a listening post and a resource for everyone else in the Tigers’ clubhouse.
“His presence has grown over the last couple of years,” Hinch said. “And when you get some hardware at this level, you end up gaining more notoriety and fame and attention than ever before. Players are looking for that authentic version of you after that happens, once you get famous and known and hit the national scene.
“That’s what our players appreciate about Tarik, because he brings it every day. It’s the same on his start days. Those days are not intimidating to our guys, because he’s approachable and normal. He does get into psycho mode on the mound, but that’s during the game and during the competition. So I think our players understand how authentic he is.”
Coming up to the starting pitcher and chatting on a game day is not probably something you’d see Lance Parrish do with Morris on the Tigers 40 years ago, or even Carlos Ruiz with Halladay on the Philadelphia Phillies 15 years ago. Once Halladay put on the headphones, it had better be an urgent matter to interrupt him. Conversely in the present, it is said that Phillies right-hander Zack Wheeler “loves to chat” on his start day. Go figure. It’s not only a generational thing, though. The game today still has its lonesome headphone holdouts.
From an outsider’s point of view, acting like an old-school hard-case to your own teammates might seem excessive for any pitcher to properly prepare for their start and execute it. Not to mention a waste of energy, like Skubal said it is for him. But the Tigers, like all clubs probably do or should, treat each player how they want to be treated, and let them be. With the Tigers, it’s very much a “To each their own” thing, Hinch said.
“It’s about what players need to do in order to be the best version of themselves in the game,” Hinch said. “That is what we as coaches need to adapt to. It goes across the entire organization, and not just with starting pitchers. It goes to how you handle any player.”
The method works, or it certainly works out. Detroit’s starting pitchers collectively came into action third in the league in ERA (raw and adjusted). The Tigers, who lead the AL Central comfortably after going deep into the playoffs a year ago, also lead MLB in victories.
Others in the Tigers’ starting rotation, like right-hander Casey Mize, prepare like Skubal. Right-hander Jack Flaherty does not. A year older than Skubal, his attitude on game days come off like an old-schooler. Flaherty is definitely a headphone guy.
“Myself, I don’t really talk on days I pitch,” Flaherty said. “Just kind of like to keep to myself. That’s just kind of how I’ve always been since I was in high school and through the minor leagues.”
Skubal said he appreciates how Flaherty does it his own way, no matter that it’s different. Or maybe because it’s different.
“He’s kind of the traditional keep-to-yourself guy, and that’s how he has success,” Skubal said. “And I love it. I think everybody knows, ‘Hey, let him do his thing on the day he pitches.’ He goes out there and competes, and that’s just who he is. Everyone else is kind of a little bit more laid back in our rotation.”
Flaherty said he has experimented with different methods but being loquacious like Skubal just doesn’t work for him.
“It’s just a way for me to be in my own world, listen to music, chill, hang out, depending on what I want to listen to that day. Just kind of be on my own vibe,” Flaherty said.
The music isn’t the same kind every time out, Flaherty said, it just depends on what he feels like listening to in the moment.
“The playlist is big enough where it can change,” Flaherty said. “In the hours leading up to the game, what I listen to while I watch film and and get ready and break down the other team, it changes as it gets closer to game time.
“It’s just a process to get into the head space in detail.”
Flaherty has made it work, posting a career 3.67 ERA in 905 career innings. He also pitched well twice in starts during the NL Championship Series and the World Series for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2024 before returning to the Tigers in free agency,
Mize said he is a social creature who prefers being in the clubhouse on days that he starts because of the opportunities to be sociable with teammates. As a pitcher, he’ll be scheduled to go for a cardio run, play long toss, or do a bullpen session while others are inside hanging out. On other days of the week, individual schedules don’t match up. The timing is off. Like a married couple with different work schedules.
“I don’t usually get to hang out and just chop it up with the guys,” said Mize, who is 28 like Skubal. “Whereas on my start day, I don’t do anything until two hours before the game. So I come in, play some cards, hang out, watch TV with the guys, or whatever. So I enjoy it.
“I’m not, like, a headphones-in guy. A don’t-talk-to-me or look-at-me guy, right? I used to be a little bit closer to that. I was really serious, but I just found that to be stressful and tiresome. So now I’m just pretty normal. I don’t even listen to music pregame (on headphones). I just listen to whatever we have on the clubhouse stereo, or whatever’s on the TV. So I’ve evolved a little bit throughout. Now it seems a little bit more stress free and easy for me. I like to be relaxed.”
It works for him. Mize, a former top overall pick who is off to the best start of his career after regaining his health in 2024, has a 2.96 ERA through his first 12 starts.
Rogers said he sees distinctive differences in how every starting pitcher on the Tigers’ staff prepares. And, like Hinch said with the coaches, it’s up to him to adapt as a catcher.
“If you videoed a day in the life of each of those guys, they’d all be completely different in how they do whatever they do to prepare,” Rogers said. “They all do a really good job of being ready when the time comes. So I’m game for whatever they want to do.”
All that Skubal wants from his teammates is for them to prepare the best they can, no matter how, and to play hard.
“There’s no cookie cutter way to do it,” Skubal said. “Everyone has their own unique way.”
