Despite a lack of run support and a bullpen collapse, Tarik Skubal delivered a strong six-inning start in his Los Angeles Dodgers debut.
Officially, Tarik Skubal's first start with the Los Angeles Dodgers will go down in the record book as a loss.
He's now 7-6 on the year, but 0-1 with his new team despite giving them six strong innings.
Skubal allowed just four hits, and while he walked a pair, he struck out six and only allowed two earned runs to score.
Manager Dave Roberts pulled him after 85 pitches with the team down, 2-1, but things would only go further downhill from there as they would lose this game to the Chicago Cubs, 5-1.
LA was unable to give him any run support as they've now dropped a surprising fifth straight game. At the end of the day, Skubal did his thing; it was just a poor performance from the bullpen, and no one stepped up offensively for the Dodgers.
Skubal discusses his Dodgers debut
"Going to bed last night I was excited, it felt like my major league debut," Skubal told SportsNetLA after the loss. "Kind of the same type of vibe in terms of the nerves running through, but I think that's all good stuff."
He continued, "I think my stuff was plenty good. I felt like I commanded everything really well."
That said, Skubal thought he could've done a better job with first pitch strikes, along with locating his sinker and slider.
Skubal said Roberts is "the manager for a reason," so he trusted his decision to pull him through six, even though the two-time Cy Young Award winner expressed that he felt good.
The future is bright for Skubal in LA
This is a Dodgers team with one of the most stacked starting rotations in all of baseball, and it'd be hard to argue that any team has a better one through five than they do.
With the recent news that Emmet Sheehan was getting demoted, that kept Eric Lauer around, at least for the time being. Not only did the Dodgers keep both of those pitchers at the deadline, but they added another southpaw in Kris Bubic.
Skubal, a fellow lefty, saw his ERA slightly rise from 2.79 to 2.81 after this start. His WHIP remains under 1.00, so that's in tremendous shape as he now has 122 strikeouts on the year.
The California native had a 2.03 ERA during the month of July across his five starts, so it'll be interesting to see if he can keep it that low here in August.
At the end of the day, this Dodgers offense isn't going to stay quiet forever, so it's only a matter of time before they put everything together, and typically, that happens in October when it matters the most.
