Skubals

Tarik Skubal made his home debut Monday, but the down-on-their-luck Dodgers still needed every bit of offense they could muster to back him up.

They held off Kansas City 6-5, salvaging the Dodger Stadium introduction of baseball’s premier trade-deadline acquisition.

Skubal, the back-to-back Cy Young Award winner, pitched five innings, giving up four hits and three runs. He struck out six.

It was a solid outing, but the Dodgers needed their slumbering bats to come alive too.

Max Muncy had a bases-loaded triple in the sixth to give the Dodgers a 5-3 advantage, their first lead of the game.

But the Royals answered in the seventh with a two-run homer by Kyle Isbel, forging a 5-5 tie.

In the bottom of the seventh, Freddie Freeman put the home team up for good, hitting a single to right that drove in Shohei Ohtani.

Impossible to know if the win marked a turnaround or simply a tourniquet for the Dodgers, who entered having lost eight of nine, including sweeps by Boston and the Chicago Cubs. They had lost seven in a row before finally winning Saturday at Arizona, then resuming the slide Sunday with a loss to the Diamondbacks.

On the flight home, manager Dave Roberts had a jarring realization.

“We’re a wild-card team right now,” he said. “We’ve got to get going and play with urgency.”

The Dodgers had 10 hits, a welcome development for a team that has had a terrible time seeing and reacting to pitches — and particularly fastballs.

The Athletic crunched the numbers and found no team in baseball has had as dramatic an increase in fastball percentage, with the Dodgers seeing that number 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. That would bother me. … We’ve scored a lot of runs — fourth in baseball — but that doesn’t tell the whole story. The story is being 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.”

By the fifth inning, the Dodgers were out of ABS challenges, with Miguel Rojas tapping his helmet to check on a called strike that was, well, 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.

Kansas City’s Jac Caglianone had 20/20 vision, with a pair of two-strike hits that gave the Royals a 3-0 advantage. The first was a low-velocity groundball 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 finally punctuated “Jac” with a K.

By that point, the Dodgers had clawed their way back to 3-2, driving in runs with clutch hits by Ohtani and Freeman that got the crowd buzzing again.

Tuesday marks the return of Blake Snell, who underwent left elbow surgery and hasn’t pitched for the Dodgers since May 9. That’s back-to-back nights featuring multiple Cy Young Award winners.

Roberts said he would like to see Snell throw five innings, roughly 75-80 pitches, in his return.

“I feel very confident,” Roberts said when asked about Snell getting back up to speed. “I had a great conversation with him yesterday. He’s on a mission, and I like when great-talent players have that mindset.”

Likewise, Roberts said catcher Will Smith, recovering from an inflamed disc in his neck, is “pain free” and on track for an imminent return.

“He’s been throwing, the weight-room stuff each day,” he said. “It’s been better, so this is going to be a big week for Will. And my expectation is that he should be taking some pitching, some coaches’ batting practice at some point this week.”

CHICAGO — Southpaw Tarik Skubal’s experience pitching in the Friendly Confines of Wrigley Field came with a hostile reception. Cubs fans booed him as he approached the bullpen gate in right field to warm up before the game. They jeered even louder and longer as he took the mound in the bottom of the first inning.

That’s what came with the “Los Angeles” scrawled across the chest of his new blue jersey. Over the weekend he’d gone from the top trade candidate in baseball, to a symbol of the Dodgers’ evil reign.

A sports betting site even seized on the moment and paid for an airplane to fly a “THE DODGERS RUINED BASEBALL” banner over Wrigley Field a few hours before the game Tuesday — although it was upside down.

As the boos quieted, he authored a quality start in his Dodgers debut. But that wasn’t enough to serve as the team’s new stopper, as the Dodgers’ offense fell flat. They stumbled to a 5-1 loss and extended their skid to a season-high five games and ensured a second straight series loss.

“There’s certainly no panic,” manager Dave Roberts said. “We’ve been through a lot of these things, this core group of guys. I think that you just got to kind of reset, flush it, find a way to win a game, and not let it just compound. But it never feels good to lose.”

The first pitch Skubal threw as a Dodger, en route to holding the Cubs to two runs and four hits in six innings, was a sinker that zipped through the top of the strike zone at 96.3 mph, according to Statcast, to get ahead in the count against Cubs MVP candidate Pete Crow-Armstrong.

For the next four pitches, he alternated between his four-seam fastball and off-speed pitches — first his changeup and then curveball. And to finish off the at-bat, he located a sinker at the bottom of the zone for a called strike three.

It was a strong first impression, and his first strikeout of six.

“Going to bed last night, excited,” Skubal said. “It felt like my major-league debut, kind of same type of vibe in terms of the nerves running through. But I think that’s all good stuff.”

Skubal retired the first six batters he faced, with the help of a sliding catch by center fielder Andy Pages and a diving grab by right fielder Kyle Tucker.

To end the second inning, Skubal got new Cub Tyrone Taylor to chase a changeup just outside. Skubal skipped backward off the mound and buried his fist in the pocket of his glove in celebration.

The next inning, Skubal wavered ever so slightly. He gave up a first-pitch solo home run to Dansby Swanson.

“I think everyone around the league and he himself would say he’s an aggressive pitcher, he comes after you,” Swanson told reporters. “ He likes to get strike one, he likes to get strike two. You’ve just got to be ready to hit pitches he may leave over the plate, and he doesn’t do that very often. He’s been so good for a reason.”

Then, after another sliding catch by Pages and a strikeout, he gave up a single to Crow-Armstrong and walked Seiya Suzuki.

In his first high-pressure situation of the night, Skubal induced Alex Bregman to fly out on a changeup.

Then, he was back to cruising. Skubal put together perfect fourth and fifth innings.

“He creates really tough angles,” said catcher Ben Rortvedt, after his first game since the Dodgers reacquired him at the trade deadline. “Really commands the glove side really well. And his off-speed is really good, his changeup is elite. It’s two fastballs you can put on a dime. It’s just really good stuff.”

In the sixth, an unlucky bounce pushed the go-ahead run across the plate.

With one out, Skubal walked Suzuki on four pitches. Then he missed his spot with a fastball to Bregman, who roped a line drive to deep right field. Tucker tracked it back to the warning track but just missed the catch as he slammed into the wall. The double put runners on second and third.

Skubal held the Cubs at bay for one more batter by getting Michael Busch to skip a groundball to second baseman Tommy Edman, playing on the edge of the infield grass. He fired home for the second out of the inning.

Then came that dose of misfortune. Skubal’s fastball did its job, as the Cubs’ Nico Hoerner drove it into the ground. Bouncing off the plate, the ball shot up in the air, and then it settled in the grass, giving Bregman enough time to score the go-ahead run.

Ian Happ, left, Seiya Suzuki, middle, and Pete Crow-Armstrong run after beating the Dodgers.

(Melissa Tamez / AP)

The Wrigley faithful turned up the heat, taunting “Skuuuuubaaaaalll.” They’d done something similar in the National League Division Series last year to Brewers ace Freddy Peralta.

“The fans are what create the environment,” Skubal said. “It’s a ton of fun to play in front of crowds like that. Even if they’re booing me or whatever it is, I think that’s what makes the game of baseball really fun, the competition really fun, and the atmosphere is really fun. I’m sure that’s not going to be the only rowdy atmosphere on the road. I plan on pitching in front of those atmospheres for the rest of the season, and then obviously, when it comes postseason time, I’ll be ready to go.”

Skubal bore down and got out of the inning with a flyout from Taylor. That changeup, designed to get him to chase, wrapped up Skubal’s outing at 85 pitches.

“For me, I want him wanting for more, feeling good,” Roberts said. “This is me still learning him. Where we’re at, I’m going to err on the side of being smart and cautious, and knowing that he can still give us more. I’m going to push him, but tonight is not the night. I just felt that that extra inning wasn’t worth the squeeze.”

When Skubal walked off the mound, his team trailed 2-1, their only run a solo homer from Tucker, who’d been booed throughout his first series back at Wrigley since departing the Cubs in free agency.

The Cubs, on the other hand, continued to rally against the Dodgers’ bullpen.

“Just a rut,” veteran leader Mookie Betts said after the loss. “It’s OK. We’re going to be OK.”