CHICAGO — It is unclear what exactly Tarik Skubal did to the people of Chicago to cause them to boo him every time he showed his face before making his Dodgers debut on Tuesday night. He had never even pitched at Wrigley Field before.
Also unclear was the message being dragged behind a plane that circled overhead hours before game time. The banner someone paid good money to suspend in the air over the Dodgers’ heads was supposed to say, “The Dodgers Ruined Baseball.” But it had been loaded backward or possibly got flipped on takeoff, creating a word jumble to be deciphered instead.
Regardless, it was a banner day for the Dodgers as they welcomed Skubal to the fold. They welcomed him with open arms but little run support and lost to the Cubs, 5-1, extending their losing streak to a season-high five games.
Skubal went an effective if not overly impressive six innings. He allowed two runs on four hits with two walks and six strikeouts.
He struck out the first batter he faced as a Dodger, freezing Pete Crow-Armstrong for a called third strike on a 99 mph fastball. The next five Cubs went down as well, two more on strikeouts and one on an outstanding play by Andy Pages in center field.
But Skubal proved his humanity when he left a first-pitch fastball over the plate to Dansby Swanson in the third inning. Swanson sent it on a 401-foot journey into the left-field bleachers for Skubal’s first hit and run allowed in his new uniform.
He gave up another hit (a single to Crow-Armstrong) and walked a batter that inning before going back to dominating the Cubs’ lineup. Skubal retired eight batters in a row before he walked Seiya Suzuki with one out in the sixth inning.
That walk set off the domino chain that led to the decisive run.
Alex Bregman followed with a fly ball to the wall in right field. Kyle Tucker seemed to be tracking the drive, but the ball glanced off the top of his glove as he neared the wall. The double put runners at first and second.
With the infield in, Skubal got Michael Busch to hit a grounder to second baseman Tommy Edman. Edman threw home for the second out of the inning.
When Nico Hoerner chopped a ball off home plate and high over the mound, though, Edman charged in but couldn’t make the play. Bregman scored the go-ahead run. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts briefly questioned umpire Erich Bacchus on whether Busch had interfered with Edman but got nowhere.
That is where the Dodgers’ offense got most of the night as well.
Another target of Wrigley ire, Tucker, matched Swanson’s home run with one of his own in the second inning. Tucker also had a single off Cubs starter Javier Assad. But the rest of the Dodgers managed just two hits of their own against Assad and the Cubs’ bullpen, none after Freddie Freeman extended his hitting streak to 14 games with a two-out single in the sixth inning.
Tucker was the only Dodger to touch second base on Tuesday.
The Cubs settled matters with two runs off Alex Vesia and Evan Phillips in the seventh and a solo homer by Hoerner off Edwin Diaz in the eighth.
More to come on this story.