Tarik Skubal shows Dodgers dominance they’ve been waiting for with 11-strikeout gem

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At the beginning of Saturday’s game, Tarik Skubal suffered his worst inning as a member of the Dodgers.

By the end of the team’s eventual 4-3 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates, however, the marquee trade deadline acquisition had rebounded for perhaps his best start with the club.

“When you get punched in the mouth early in this game, I always think it’s important for any pitcher to see how you respond to those moments,” Skubal said afterward. “I think that’s when the true, who-you-really-are kind of shows out.”

Indeed, despite giving up three runs in a first inning full of less-than-fortunate contact (two soft singles and a down-the-line triple) on what Skubal felt were mostly well-executed pitches (only one of the hits came on a pitch even in the strike zone), the star pitcher did not waver in his fourth start with the Dodgers.

Even after two more tough-luck singles dropped to begin the second, he did not falter in the face of early adversity. 

Instead, with the kind of dominant flurry the team has been waiting to see out of the reigning two-time Cy Young Award winner, Skubal rediscovered a “standard” that he said had been missing in his first couple weeks since joining the team.

“I’m not going to be perfect out there, but yeah, I need to be more efficient,” Skubal said last week, after failing to pitch into the seventh inning in each of his first three appearances with the Dodgers. “That’s the standard that I hold myself to, is pitching deeper into ballgames. Giving our team a chance to win every time out.”

And right on cue, he rebounded en route to a seven-inning, three-run, 11-strikeout showcase –– finally finding a rhythm just when it appeared his game might go off the rails.

“From that point on, it was a different pitcher,” manager Dave Roberts said. “He sort of went into bully mode … and you could see we fed off of that intensity.”

The turnaround started in the second, when Skubal stranded runners at second and third by getting his first two strikeouts of the day, turning to his slider for each after struggling to get early whiff with his trademark changeup.

From there, the momentum kept building. He retired the side in order in both the third and fourth with a pair of Ks each. He worked around a two-out walk in the fifth while dialing up a couple more punchouts. Then, he reached top gear in the top of the sixth, striking out the side in a breathtaking 14-pitch sequence that was punctuated by a 100 mph fastball –– his hardest pitch with the Dodgers, and second-hardest all season.

“Early in games, I might just be trying to feel it out too much instead of just competing with what I got in that moment,” Skubal said. “I feel like deeper into games, you just kind of get into a little bit better rhythm and your command cleans up … So when I feel confident commanding the ball, that’s when I feel like I can really start letting it rip, and it’s going to go where I want it to.”

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As Skubal found his groove, so too did the Dodgers offense, clawing its way to the lead with rallies in the fourth and fifth innings.

In the fourth, Teoscar Hernández and newly recalled Alek Thomas (who was summoned from triple-A prgame to replace the injured Andy Pages) strung together back-to-back RBI singles against Pirates Jared Jones. 

Then, in the fifth, Kyle Tucker ended his historic home-field hitting drought, snapping a 26-at-bat hitless streak at Dodger Stadium (which dated back to Aug. 2) with a two-run single through a drawn-in infield (giving him his first RBIs at the venue since July 8).

“I think the last couple days is more of what we’re going to see going forward,” Roberts said of Tucker, while praising what he felt was an uptick in the quality of his at-bats. “Obviously, everyone’s talking about the splits and how much he struggled at home … So it was really good for him to come through right there.”

Skubal made sure to make it count, too, finishing his 106-pitch outing with one more 1-2-3 inning in the seventh.

Overall, he retired 18 of the final 19 batters he faced, finished one strikeout away from his season-high of 12, and –– for the first time since his blockbuster arrival before the trade deadline –– flashed the sort of sustained dominance that has made him arguably the sport’s best current pitcher.

“That,” Roberts said, “is the guy that we needed.”

Added Skubal: “The stuff coming out of hand is as good as it’s ever been.”

All it took to get there was the pitcher overcoming his worst inning as a Dodger along the way.