DETROIT >> Tarik Skubal got out his phone and started scrolling through Justin Verlander’s Baseball Reference page.

“You’ve made me want to look it up,” he said.

Skubal was drafted by the Tigers in 2018, the year after Verlander was traded to Houston and won his first of two World Series rings. Certainly, though, Skubal is very aware of the legacy Verlander left behind in Detroit.

“It feels like he’s been in the league my whole life,” Skubal said, reading through Verlander’s stats. “He was rookie of the year in ’06. His career WAR is 81.6, that is effing insane. Look at this, star, star, star, star (noting his All-Star seasons). MVP. Cy Young, one, two, three times. Cy Young top five six times. Top 10 MVP voting, one, two, three, four, five times.

“It’s like, impressive. Just very impressive.”

Verlander, 41, will make just his fifth start on Sunday at Comerica Park. His season started late while he worked through a shoulder issue.

“I’m excited to watch him play,” said Skubal, who was slated to face the Astros Saturday evening. “I like watching the game’s best going at it.”

It’s not fair or right to compare Skubal to Verlander. Manager AJ Hinch, who has managed both, put it best: “Justin is a few thousand innings ahead of him.”

Verlander has thrown 2,925 more big-league innings and played in 15 more big-league seasons, to be exact. Skubal is 27. When Verlander was 27, he’d already pitched in a World Series, won rookie of the year and been on three All-Star teams.

And that was before his breakout MVP and Cy Young season of 2011.

“What he’s been able to do, compete at the highest level of the game, be one of the game’s best for however many years, that’s just very impressive,” Skubal said. “Just to be in that conversation for so long. He’s done everything in his career. He’s gotten all the accolades.

“It just speaks to him and his work ethic.”

That’s where Skubal intersects with Verlander. He shares Verlander’s unquenchable desire to be great. He shares Verlander’s curiosity about both the art and science of pitching. He shares Verlander’s dedication to his body and to his craft.

And both are alley-cat competitive on the mound.

“I hesitate to bring Tarik up when you talk about a future Hall of Famer,” Hinch said. “It’s probably unfair to both. But I can tell you, I love their competitiveness similarly. When you have a front-end type pitcher, no matter where they’re at in their career, whether it’s the beginning, middle or end, there’s a characteristic that comes with that title, that tag, that expectation.”

Skubal has stamped himself among the premier starting pitchers, not just left-handers, in the game. He’s got a sub-2 ERA (1.90) and a sub-1 WHIP (0.773). His Statcast run value ranks in the top 2 percentile in baseball. His strikeout (32.7%) and walk (3.7%) rates rank in the top 7 percentile.

Like Verlander did well before age 27, Skubal has put himself in the Cy Young conversation.

“They are two different people and two different pitchers,” Hinch said. “I’ve managed a lot of good pitchers in my day. … I think we see a lot in the making of a front-end pitcher in Tarik.

“But he holds his own name. He doesn’t need to be compared to anybody.”

Skubal scrolled to the bottom