Tarik Skubal never located his best stuff Monday, missing the strike zone with his fastball far more frequently than usual.
The Dodgers found their way out of their recent downward spiral, though, and that was enough of a relief for their new ace and back-to-back Cy Young winner. Skubal pitched five innings, giving up four hits and three runs. He struck out six.
“I kind of sprayed the ball a little bit,” Skubal said after a 6-5 win over Kansas City in his Dodger Stadium debut. “That’s kind of unusual for me, especially with my command, but I thought I competed well and gave our team a chance to win.”
That was a welcome change for the down-on-their-luck Dodgers, who entered having lost eight of nine, including sweeps by the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs. The Dodgers had lost seven in a row before finally winning Saturday at Arizona, then promptly resumed the slide Sunday with a loss to the Diamondbacks.
So it’s hard to know whether Monday’s win marked a turnaround or simply another tourniquet to pause the bleeding. Tuesday, it’s Blake Snell’s turn. He underwent surgery on his left elbow and hasn’t pitched for the Dodgers since May 9.
The Dodgers (71-48) are hoping for an encore performance at the plate, where Monday there were some familiar flickers of life.Freddie Freeman had three of their 10 hits, driving in two runs. Shohei Ohtani had two hits and scored twice. And Max Muncy — on his bobblehead night — had a bases-loaded double that gave the Dodgers a 5-3 lead in the sixth and ignited the antsy crowd.
That good feeling didn’t last long, as the Royals (49-71) forged a 5-5 tie in the seventh with a two-run homer.
The Dodgers pulled away for good in the seventh after Ohtani singled, then stole second, and Freeman brought him home with a single to right.
“I thought we fought well,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “Tarik didn’t have his best stuff. You could see his fastball command wasn’t there. But he didn’t buckle.”
From the offense, Roberts said, “I saw that urgency tonight which we’ve got to build on from here on out.”
Urgency? The guy who had the winning hit probably wouldn’t choose that word.
“There’s going to be no panic out of this clubhouse,” Freeman said. “I understand what Doc’s saying [but] baseball’s a little different. I can’t go out there and swing harder and throw harder. That’s just not how it works.”
Slumps happen, even with good teams. Last year’s Dodgers lost seven in a row in July yet went on to win the World Series. But this recent slide has been sobering, with virtually all bats going cold at once. What’s more, the Dodgers have struggled mightily to hit fastballs.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts reacts after Tarik Skubal retires the Royals in order in the fourth inning Monday.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The Athletic crunched the numbers and determined that no team in baseball has faced as dramatic an increase in fastball percentage, with the Dodgers seeing that frequency climb steadily since May.
“It never feels good to be bullied,” Roberts said. “And to know that teams go after us with the fastball more than any team in baseball, that’s bothersome. … We’ve scored a lot of runs — fourth in baseball — but that doesn’t tell the whole story. The story is the best version of ourselves, and that’s hitting the fastball and making adjustments in at-bats situationally, all of it.
“So yeah, it’s something that I hope our guys will take that personally. We shouldn’t get bullied.”
There were some mental errors too. By the fifth, the Dodgers were out of ABS challenges, with Miguel Rojas tapping his helmet to check on a called strike that wound up being squarely in the strike zone.
That came after an unsuccessful challenge by Andy Pages in the fourth, and his track record on those inquiries is grim. Thirteen of his 24 challenges were confirmed strikes.
Dodgers third base coach Dino Ebel waves home Shohei Ohtani on a single by Freddie Freeman in the seventh inning Monday against Kansas City.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Kansas City’s Jac Caglianone had 20/20 vision at the plate, with a pair of two-strike hits early in the game that gave the Royals a 3-0 lead. The first was a low-velocity ground ball threaded up the middle to drive in a run. In the third, he hit a two-run shot over the right-field wall.
It wasn’t until the fifth that Skubal at last punctuated Jac with a K.
Skubal made no apologies about the butterflies he was feeling.
“I think nerves are a good thing,” he said. “The day I’m pitching and I don’t have nerves is probably the day I retire, because having nerves just means you care.”
Roberts said of Skubal: “I think we’ll see a different guy Sunday. … I liked the way he came back to the bench and looked over his outing. I’m sure all he cares about is winning the game, which we did. We’re going to have plenty of time to lean on him, and he’s going to be great.”
