Tigers fans (and I think baseball fans in general) feel unhappy that the Wednesday rainout with the Pirates did not lead to a Paul Skenes matchup against Tarik Skubal.

“So the Tigers are basically conceding Game 2. A 1-0 loss incoming,” another fan said.

Sports.Yahoo.com

Actually, I believe both teams increase the chance for a split this way. This spreadsheet uses the FanGraphs probabilities for the actual matchups and my estimated probabilities for the proposed parings. The probability for a Tigers sweep for the actual matchup is 032, because not only is Skubal better than Andrew Heaney, the Tigers offense is a lot better than the Pirates offense. So Skubal is almost a sure win in that game. Heaney is enough better than Keider Montero that the game there is about 50/50. I also believe that the Tigers are better than 50/50 against the Pirates in a Skenes/Skubal tilt for the same reason, the Tigers offense is just better.

Note that a split goes up to 0.52 from 0.5 in the proposed matchup as well. The Pirates do have a better chance of winning at least one game (Sweep + Split) with Skenes vs. Skubal, I think they are willing to take the split to avoid a sweep.