00:00So, let's talk about the Detroit Tigers ace, Tarek Skubal. He is officially a back-to-back
00:06American League Cy Young Award winner, he's an ace for Team USA, and he recently became a record
00:11winner in arbitration, but if you ask him, he got here by never being satisfied, and that relentless
00:17pursuit of more hardware, it's leading him into a new field. Tarek Skubal is now an aspiring barista,
00:24tucked inside his locker at Joker Marchant Stadium in Lakeland, is the latest tool in the Tigers'
00:28quest for greatness. It's an espresso machine, he bought it with his longtime teammate, good friend
00:34and clubhouse neighbor Casey Mize, for Skubal, who is a dad with two young kids, a daily commute,
00:41and a pretty intense job with long days at the office. It is the perfect pick-me-up for those
00:46early Florida mornings, when I caught up with him, he was pretty adamant about the benefits.
00:51Caffeine, yeah, Skubal said. It's a performance enhancer, it really is, swear to God.
00:59You can actually call this the Charlie Morton effect, remember Charlie? The veteran right-hander
01:03made just nine starts for the Tigers last summer after they acquired him from Baltimore at the trade
01:08deadline, but even in that short time, he left a lasting legacy. Shortly after his arrival, he bought
01:16an espresso system for the home clubhouse at Comerica Park, and it wasn't just a machine, it was an event,
01:22manager A.J. Hinch joked at the time. He'll give you a 30-minute dissertation on espresso making,
01:27calling Morton an aficionado might actually be underselling it. Morton himself explained it by
01:32saying, I think this generation of player is into coffee, but more discerning about coffee,
01:37about food and those kinds of things. The interest was definitely there from his new teammates,
01:43especially Skubal, for whom coffee was already part of his daily routine, even before his starts.
01:49Skubal gave us a little insight into that pre-game ritual.
01:52You have to make sure you're close to a bathroom, he laughed. I think there's a fine line,
01:57timing-wise. I do it in season to where an hour and a half, two hours before, the game is
02:02my last
02:03coffee, Americano, and then I'm usually riding the high for as long as I can. Now Morton's fancy
02:09machine didn't make the trip south for spring training, and the standard coffee machine in the
02:13food room just wasn't cutting it for the guys. Lakeland has some great coffee spots, but none are
02:18particularly close to the park, and when you arrive as early as players do, it's tough to get that good
02:23coffee to last through a full workout. So, Skubal and Mize stepped up. Their new machine isn't nearly
02:30as fancy as Morton's, but it serves its purpose perfectly. Skubal explained the difference in
02:35complexity. As we get better with this, we'll probably venture into where Charlie's at. Because
02:40that machine that he got us last year, dude that's like rocket science trying to figure out how to do
02:45it
02:45right, like, you do it, and sometimes nothing comes out, and you're like, I don't know what I did
02:50wrong. Hinch confirmed this, adding, yeah, it's really hard, you need a YouTube video to figure out
02:58Charlie's. The machine Skubal and Mize have is simpler, but finding the right mix is still a process
03:03of trial and error. Usually, you need a scale, and some other things, we're just eyeballing it, Skubal
03:10admitted. There's a lot of trial and error right now, but we're locking it in. Yesterday, we probably
03:16brewed more bad ones than good ones. But we're getting there. We're getting there. So, what's
03:21the go-to drink for the reigning Cy Young winner? Iced Americano every day, he said without hesitation.
03:27Yeah, it's my thing. I get too jittery with hot coffee. I don't know why. Even in Detroit when it's
03:32cold, I have iced Americano. I love it. And how many can he have? Three? Well, that would be six
03:38shots of
03:39espresso. That's a lot. I think four is where I'm kind of done. So, there you have it. The Tigers
03:44ace
03:44is perfecting his craft on the mound and in the clubhouse, one iced Americano at a time. It makes
03:49you wonder. With Skubal and Mize dialing, in their espresso recipe and a full season ahead, is a
03:55perfectly brewed cup of coffee, the secret ingredient to a Tigers championship run.
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