ATLANTA — Lefty Tarik Skubal hasn’t had time to fully reflect on his time in Detroit. When he learned at the beginning of the month that he was being traded to the Dodgers, he had one night of emotional goodbyes, before shifting his focus the next morning to preparing to face the Cubs in a few days.
Friday won’t be the right time either. He’s scheduled to take the mound against the Tigers, the only organization he’d played for up until three and a half weeks ago, in the series opener.
“I play baseball, and I don’t really want to let any noise or anything outside change or take away from my ability to go play baseball and put our team in a position to win,” he said in a recent conversation with The Times. “So that’s where my focus is always at. It doesn’t matter if it’s opening day of the season, it doesn’t matter if it’s spring training, it doesn’t matter if it’s the dog days of July, it doesn’t matter if it’s the postseason. For me, the game is always the same game, and that’s something that I take a ton of pride in.”
Even in his short time with the Dodgers, Skubal has thrown himself into the task at hand, from the way he’s pitched, to his commitment to connecting with his new teammates, to how he’s handled questions about his impending free agency.
Oddly enough, after the World Series favorites traded for the best pitcher available, they lost the next six games as part of a seven-game losing streak.
“Everyone around here was like, ‘Hey, we win games here,’” Skubal said. “And I go, ‘I don’t know, maybe it’s me.’”
Eventually, the Dodgers did win a game with Skubal on the roster. They even swept two series straight — before running into the Braves this week. And as Skubal has settled in, he’s enjoyed the sheer abundance of baseball conversations going on around him all the time, whether it be a pitcher chatting with the pitching coaches about sequencing, or hitters breaking down how an opposing pitcher attacked him.
“No one’s ego is too big to ask a question and try to learn from anybody,” Skubal said. “So I think that’s what makes this team so good. I think that’s why they tick, and I think that’s why they’re so good, especially in September, is they’re just not afraid to fail. They’re going to try and learn as much from each other as possible. I just love being a part of that.”
Likewise, his new teammates have loved him embracing them right away.
“You can’t tell whether he’s pitching or not because his personality never changes,” Kiké Hernández said. “And I appreciate how talkative he is, like even during his starts, like in the middle of the game, which is kind of refreshing.”
Already, Skubal’s joining in on pregame handshake lines and slapping the dugout railing in time to Roki Sasaki’s warm-up music. After Miguel Rojas nicknamed him “Scooby Doo Pa Pa,” Skubal used the song that inspired the name on an Instagram post.
“At the end of my career, if the one thing [all my ex-teammates] say about me is, ‘Yeah, he was talented on the field, but he was an even better teammate,’ that’s what I want to be remembered as,” Skubal said.
Skubal is only under club control for the rest of the season, but he’s consistently said he doesn’t want to address free agency.
“I really am probably not going to get to that until this season’s done,” he said. “Until, hopefully, I’m holding up a trophy and I’m celebrating with these guys for two weeks, and I’m going to [have a headache] for a month after.”
A video clip from Skubal’s appearance on the podcast “Pardon My Take” caused a stir on social media, when he said, “I would love to play my whole career in Detroit” and expresses hope that the Tigers are involved in negotiations in November. But Skubal points out the missing context in that clip.
His response was to a question that described the Tigers trading him as an “unfortunate part of where baseball is.” He understood the premise as: smaller markets can’t retain their stars.
Pitcher Tarik Skubal (29) hugs Jack Flaherty in the dugout after getting pulled from his last start with the Tigers on July 29.
(Paul Sancya / Associated Press)
“Which I don’t agree with,” said Skubal, who has thought a lot about the larger picture as a member of the MLB Players Assn. Executive Subcommittee. “You can retain whoever. Now, the longer you wait, the harder it is to get guys to give away the years to hit free agency. I think that’s just the business of baseball, and that’s not any different than any other sport.”
He backed his point with counterexamples on each side: the Royals signing homegrown star Bobby Witt Jr. to an 11-year extension worth $288.8 million guaranteed, and the Yankees’ Aaron Judge still hitting free agency in 2022 (before ultimately re-signing).
“There’s narratives around the sport that I don’t agree with, and that’s one of them,” Skubal said.
Skubal also doesn’t buy into the fascination with the 100-pitch threshold.
He threw 109 and 106 pitches in each of his last two starts. Skubal had only surpassed 105 pitches twice before in his career, including the postseason.
“I don’t really understand the difference between 98 and 107,” he said. “I always adjust my workload in between, based on what I’m doing on the field anyways. My routine I trust a lot in terms of that, too, and how I go about my business to make sure that I feel good every fifth day.”
The Dodgers have struggled at times since the All-Star break, but Will Smith’s return from injury and Shohei Ohtani’s return to pitching should help.
Clearly, even though he’s coming off a May surgery to remove a bone chip from his left elbow, and will have free agency to worry about in a couple months, Skubal isn’t being precious about his workload.
“All my games that I’ve been pitching in have been pretty competitive,” Skubal said, “and I want to be on the mound in all those games and try to win as many games as I can for L.A.”
As he and manager Dave Roberts get more time together, Roberts will get an even better sense of how to read the southpaw’s body language — something Skubal said they’ve already had “unique conversations” about — to help him decide when to take him out of games and when to push him.
They seem to be off to a solid start. As Skubal entered the dugout after the first inning of his last start, having given up three runs to the Pirates (“bad luck, but also some bad execution,” Skubal said), Roberts said: “That’s all they get today.”
That’s exactly how the game played out.
“He could have said that, and I could have given him five runs,” Skubal said. “But he said that, and mentally, I’m like, he’s got my back. He knows, keep us in the game, and we’re going to win.”
Though Skubal excels at focusing on the present, he also seems to sense how much weight his words carry. Wanting to avoid out-of-context reading between the lines as he praised the Dodgers, Skubal made sure to note that he wasn’t comparing his new situation with his old one.
He’s made clear over and over how special his time in Detroit was to him.
Skubal’s resolve hasn’t been tested in exactly the way it will be on Friday. But he’s performed on that same mound under unique circumstances.
When Skubal took the mound in his last start for the Tigers on July 29, he knew it could be a turning point for him and the club. The Tigers lost in extra innings, but he made a quality start and recorded his 1,000th career strikeout before leaving the game to a standing ovation at Comerica Park.
“You really appreciate that stuff,” Skubal said. “And I went down the tunnel and had some conversations with coaches that were pretty emotional too.
“You appreciate everything because without fans, this game is nothing. If no one showed up, we wouldn’t be able to play baseball for a living.”
He’s sure to have quite the reception on Friday, too. And even though Skubal excels at compartmentalizing, Roberts had one request for the Tigers.
“I hope they do the festivities the night after we win on Friday,” Roberts said, “so the emotion doesn’t get to him and he can just kind of enjoy the welcome back.”
