I promise you, Tarik, Los Angeles will show you so much support if you fight like you did Sunday.
Though you, of course, would also appreciate a little help from your new friends.
A little run support. A little urgency. For them to clean it up a little in the field behind you.
Everything that was missing — again — in the Dodgers’ 6-2 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers on Sunday, their 11th loss in 16 games.
Sunday’s we-have-Tarik-Skubal-and-you-don’t game against the Brewers — Milwaukee also sought his services but refused, reportedly, to part with winning pitcher Logan Henderson in a deal — didn’t go as planned for the Dodgers.
Skubal threw a career-high 109 pitches through six innings, gave up two runs and took the loss for the second time in three starts with the Dodgers, who were trailing 2-1 when he left the game.
Skubal is new here and it’s already a familiar story: They trailed 2-1 when he left the game after six innings in his debut and they were down 3-2 when he exited after five innings in his second start with the club.
It’s not personal. The Dodgers have scored the sixth-fewest runs (50) in baseball this month, when they’ve gone 5-10. They have an OPS of .672, which is 21st in baseball in that span.
They’re not just scuffling, they’re sleepwalking, this team that previously had a .773 OPS through the end of July.
They’re getting every team’s best shot, as they knew they would, and they’re … shrugging.
“The results are hard,” manager Dave Roberts said. “Hitting’s hard. But I do think that fighting and winning pitches, spoiling pitches, that’s care, hunger.
“That’s the reason why you look at four and a half months in a season, the Brewers have outscored us. It’s a team that’s young and hungry. It’s certainly not talent. I say this because, this has been four, five, six weeks of below-average production from our offense. It’s the truth.”
Presumably, when the games mean more and the three-peat-dreaming Dodgers — who scored only 10 runs in four games against the Brewers, three of which they lost — will care enough to wake up.
It’s just that it’ll take more, apparently, for the Dodgers to stop hitting the snooze button and start hitting the baseball than the prospect of locking up a potential tiebreaker against the Milwaukee Brewers on a pleasant Sunday afternoon at Dodger Stadium.
Clearly it’ll take more, too, than wanting to make a good first impression on Skubal, the two-time Cy Young-award winner and free agent-to-be.
The Dodgers acquired Skubal in an abundantly predictable bombshell trade with the Detroit Tigers in exchange for a trio of prospects, wanting to test the idiom that a ballclub can never have enough pitching.
His new colleagues haven’t done anything to make him miss his best friends on the Detroit Tigers any less, but Skubal hasn’t exactly issued a dominant first impression, either.
It hasn’t been the nightmare pairing so many predicted — at least not for opponents.
In each start, Skubal has been inefficient, he’s been searching for his command. In his 17 innings over three games in Dodger blue, he’s given up 15 hits and seven runs (six earned), 19 strikeouts and six walks.
So, yeah, we can totally table the debate about who should be the Dodgers’ first starter in the postseason: In Yoshinobu Yamamoto we trust.
But credit Skubal for gritting it out each time, keeping the Dodgers in those three games against the Chicago Cubs, the Kansas City Royals and Brewers.
On Sunday, after settling down in the third and fourth innings, he went back to work in the sixth inning, fired up — and struck out the side with the help of a 99-mph fastball and sinker.
“I was just frustrated with the pitch count through five,” Skubal said. “I’m glad Doc gave me an opportunity to go back out there for the sixth, just save some innings from the bullpen.
“My last outing was five. The one before that was six. That’s just, it’s not acceptable. It’s not the standard of what I think I’m capable of in this league. So, you know, I just need to be better.”
So too do the Dodgers’ big name free-agent signings from last offseason: $240-million man Kyle Tucker went 0 for 19 on the homestand and dropped a ball in right field Sunday; high-profile closer Edwin Díaz is making every save opportunity a high-wire tightrope act, blowing three opportunities in his past five appearances.
Maybe there’s a lesson there: Buyer beware?
Still, Roberts likes what he’s learned about Skubal so far.
“Wants to win; prepared; great competitor,” Roberts said. “We certainly haven’t seen his best yet, but man, it feels good every time he’s out there. It really does.
“I just still don’t think we’ve seen his best, which is a good thing for us.”
If Skubal can fight to get up off this floor — if that is what this is, the low point for both the pitcher and his new club — L.A. will love him for it.
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