Dodgers edge Royals to salvage Tarik Skubals

Tarik Skubal made his home debut Monday, but the down-on-their-luck Dodgers still needed every bit of offense they might 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 5 innings, giving up 4 hits and three runs. He struck out six.

It was a stable outing, but the Dodgers (71-48) needed their slumbering bats to come alive too.

Max Muncy had a bases-loaded double in the sixth to give the Dodgers a 5-3 benefit, their first lead of the sport.

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

In the underside of the seventh, Freddie Freeman put the home workforce up for good, hitting a single to proper that drove in Shohei Ohtani.

Impossible to know if the win marked a turnaround or merely a tourniquet for the Dodgers, who entered having misplaced eight of 9, including sweeps by Boston and the Chicago Cubs. They had misplaced seven in a row before finally profitable Saturday at Arizona, then resuming the slide Sunday with a loss to the Diamondbacks.

On the flight home, supervisor 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 workforce that has had a horrible time seeing and reacting to pitches — and notably fastballs.

The Athletic crunched the numbers and discovered no workforce in baseball has had as dramatic an increase in fastball share, with the Dodgers seeing that quantity 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 had been out of ABS challenges, with Miguel Rojas tapping his helmet to test on a called strike that was, properly, squarely in the strike zone.

Dodgers supervisor Dave Roberts reacts after Tarik Skubal retires the Royals in order in the fourth inning Monday.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

That got here after an unsuccessful problem by Andy Pages in the fourth, and his monitor document on those inquiries is grim. Thirteen of his 24 challenges had been confirmed strikes.

Kansas City’s Jac Caglianone had 20/20 imaginative and prescient, with a pair of two-strike hits that gave the Royals (49-71) a 3-0 benefit. The first was a low-velocity groundball threaded up the center 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 Okay.

By that level, the Dodgers had clawed their means back to 3-2, driving in runs with clutch hits by Ohtani and Freeman that obtained the gang buzzing again.

Tuesday marks the return of Blake Snell, who underwent left elbow surgical procedure and hasn’t pitched for the Dodgers since May 9. That’s back-to-back nights that includes a number of Cy Young Award winners.

Dodgers third base coach Dino Ebel waves home Shohei Ohtani on a single by Freddie Freeman in the seventh inning Monday against Kansas City.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Roberts said he would love to see Snell throw 5 innings, roughly 75-80 pitches, in his return.

“I feel very confident,” Roberts said when requested about Snell getting back up to velocity. “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 infected disc in his neck, is “pain free” and on monitor 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.”