HOUSTON — It was a fair and obvious pre-series talking point. The Houston Astros, making their eighth straight postseason appearance, had an obvious edge in playoff experience over a Detroit Tigers’ team with 11 rookies that hadn’t been on this stage in 10 years.

You know who didn’t care one bit about that? Every player and coach in the Tigers’ clubhouse.

“We know people are wondering how we're going to respond to this,” manager AJ Hinch said before the game on Tuesday. “But it's only outside of our clubhouse. We know how we're going to respond. We're going to show up. We're going to have a lot of fun. We're going to be pretty young. We're going to be pretty energized.

“And our guys are going to be doing things for the first time with no pressure. I know everybody wants to put pressure on us, but we have the least pressure on us. We get to go and play with freedom.”

The skipper nailed it.

The underdog Tigers seized early control of this short three-game wild-card series, stunning the American League West champion Astros, 3-1 before an announced sellout crowd (40,617) at Minute Maid Park Tuesday afternoon.

Against lefty Framber Valdez, a seasoned playoff performer, the Tigers strung three two-out singles together to build a 3-0 lead in the second inning. And that was all the cushion their soon-to-be Cy Young Award-winning ace would need.

Lefty Tarik Skubal showed no nerves, no anxiousness, no outward signs that he was wowed by the size of the stage. He ripped through the first three batters in five pitches. Through two innings, he threw 15 pitches, 14 strikes and got six straight outs.

Skubal ended up barreling through six scoreless innings, allowing four hits and a walk with six strikeouts. He certainly didn’t shy away from the strike zone. His strike percentage was 72.7%. That’s up from his MLB-best 69.3% in the regular season.

Skubal becomes the third Tigers’ pitcher to throw six scoreless innings in his postseason debut. The others were Ed Willett in 1909, Joe Coleman in 1972 and Max Scherzer in 2011.

The Astros made him work a lot harder in the third and fourth innings. He stranded a pair of runners in the third, getting Kyle Tucker to fly out to left. And the fourth inning nearly got away from him.

Yordan Alvarez singled and with one out Yainer Diaz walked. But Skubal bowed his neck.

First, he punched out Jeremy Pena for the second time in the game. In the second inning, Skubal attacked him with four changeups and Pena seemed overmatched. In the fourth, he set him up with a pair of 98-mph four-seamers up in the zone and went back to the changeup to finish him off.

Next up was Victor Caratini, who singled off Skubal in the third. Skubal got ahead 0-2 and then busted a 100-mph two-seamer in and it spun Caratini around. It also took his heart. Skubal followed with a changeup well off the plate and Caratini, beaten, feebly chased it for strike three.

It was a 29-pitch inning, which would’ve been more expensive except Skubal posted two five-pitch innings. The first and then the fifth.

With two out in the sixth, after throwing a 100-mph four-seamer to Alex Bregman, Skubal winced and started shaking his left leg. He called catcher Jake Rogers out to the mound and Hinch and trainer Ryne Eubanks quickly followed.

He might’ve rolled his ankle, but Skubal threw one practice pitch and stayed in. Bregman singled off the left field wall but Skubal ended the inning striking out Diaz with a 99-mph heater on his 88th and last pitch.

The three-run lead was first entrusted to right-hander Will Vest, and he was perfect. He dispatched all five batters he faced, striking out four of them.

Lefty Tyler Holton finished off the final batter in the eighth and then things got real tense real fast in the bottom of the ninth.

Right-hander Jason Foley, with 28 saves in the regular season, was summoned, even though lefty-swinging Alvarez was first up for Houston. Alvarez blistered a double off the wall in left.

Bregman followed with an infield single and with no outs, the tying run was at the plate. It looked like Foley struck out Diaz. Home-plate umpire Tony Randazzo initially raised his arm for strike three, but after consulting with first base umpire Jordan Baker, he said the ball was fouled into the dirt.

Next pitch, Diaz singled to right field, scoring pinch-runner Zach Dezenzo.

Pena bunted the tying runs into scoring position and with one out, Hinch summoned right-hander Beau Brieske.

Just like he did in a similar situation in Baltimore two weeks ago, Brieske bulldogged his way out of the mess. With his fastball hitting 100 mph, he got Caratini to line out to left field. He walked Chas McCormick to load the bases, after getting ahead 1-2.

That brought up veteran Jason Heyward. Brieske got him to chase a 1-2 changeup and then went back to it. Soft line out to first. Ballgame.

The offense, has it has a lot this season, came in one burst.

Rookie Wenceel Perez singled and Spencer Torkelson walked to put Valdez in trouble in the second inning. It was clear he didn’t have his usual pinpoint command. Of his first 30 pitches, 15 were balls, 15 were strikes.

The Tigers didn’t let him off the hook.

Speedy Parker Meadows extended the inning, beating out a routine double-play ball. His sprint speed home to first, according to Statcast, was 30.3 feet per second, which is considered elite.

Rogers, the former Astros prospect who caught Valdez in Class A ball, rocketed a 3-0 fastball into left field for the first RBI single. Rookie Trey Meadows and Matt Vierling followed with RBI singles, both swatting fastballs.

The Tigers, smartly, were driving balls up the middle and to the opposite field against Valdez whose mastery lies in his ability to get right-handed hitters to rollover pitches. He had a 61.7% ground-ball rate in the regular season.

The Tigers mustered just three hits against the Astros’ bullpen.

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