Tarik Skubal was prepared for Dodgers challenge by failure ‘on the biggest stage’

Tarik Skubal refers to the game only as Game 5. He doesn’t mention the year or the round of the playoffs in which it was played.

Each of his previous two seasons ended in the fifth and final game of an American League Division Series, but it was obvious which one Skubal was referencing in a recent conversation with the California Post.

Oct. 12, 2024: the Detroit Tigers against the Cleveland Guardians at Progressive Field in Cleveland — or, as Skubal called it, the game in which he “failed on the biggest stage.”

As painful as the experience was, Skubal said he now appreciates it.

“I’m just not afraid of failure anymore,” he said.

That mindset will be critical in the coming months. 

Since his trade from the Tigers, Skubal has made three starts for the Dodgers that he described as “not acceptable.” He will not only have to pitch better, he will have to do so in the country’s No. 2 media market for a historic franchise with championship expectations. (His next start will be Saturday at Dodger Stadium against the Pittsburgh Pirates.)

The circumstances are entirely new to him, but Skubal has an idea of how he will deal with it based on what happened two years ago after he scaled the mound for the Tigers in a winner-takes-all Game 5 against the Guardians.

The Tigers went ahead in the top of the fifth inning on a run-scoring single by Kerry Carpenter and were on their way to the AL Championship Series — only for disaster to strike. With the bases loaded, Skubal drilled José Ramírez to force in a run that leveled the game 1-1. Skubal’s next pitch was a down-the-middle sinker that Lane Thomas blasted over the wall in left-field center. 

Grand slam.

The Tigers went on to lose the game, and, by extension, the series. Skubal was crushed.

“Two or three days, I thought about it a lot,” he said. “I wasn’t really able to watch baseball at the time.”

When he was able to start reflecting on the game, however, he realized there was no reason to be ashamed.

His pitch to Thomas was thrown with conviction. The pitch after, to Josh Naylor, was another sinker for a strike. He returned to pitch a 1-2-3 inning in the sixth.

“I’m proud of the way I competed that day,” Skubal said.

He was also proud of how he came back the next season, as he pitched even better to win his second consecutive Cy Young Award.

“If anything, it probably lit a little bit of a fire into your competitiveness,” he said. “You don’t want to fail, but when you fail, it just motivates you to work even harder and see how good you can be. The way I responded to it is everything.”

Skubal’s perspective was clarified by the experience.

“Failure is going to happen,” Skubal said. “Is it OK? No, but it’s going to happen. It’s life. You’re human. You fail in every job ever. You’re going to fail. When you fail and when adversity hits you in the face, there’s just a lot of growth to be had from all those things. It only makes you better, so I’m not afraid of it.”

Many pitchers, even elite pitchers, approach their starts as if they are chores, Dodgers great Clayton Kershaw said. But when they represented the United States together in the World Baseball Classic this spring, Kershaw noticed that Skubal didn’t think like that.

“He wants to pitch,” Kershaw said. “He literally wants to be out there.”

Skubal explained that’s because he doesn’t consider the potential downside.

“I think I’m the most prepared player on the field every time I take the field,” he said. “If I’m going to lose a game, I want it to be in my hands. I can wear the loss just because I know I prepare really well and I go out there and I don’t really leave anything on the table. I give this game everything I’ve got. If I’m going to fail, I want it to be me. That’s kind of where I’m at mentally. I’m gonna go out there and give it everything I’ve got and if I fail, I’d rather it be me than anybody else because I can handle it.”

Skubal pointed to how Yoshinobu Yamamoto last year closed out Game 7 of the World Series a day after starting Game 6.

“If he would have gone out for Game 7 and failed, no one in here would have [cared] because he gave everything he had,” he said. “That’s all you can ask out of a teammate. That’s all you can ask out of yourself. He did it, and he had success, and now it’s one of the craziest postseason performances I’ve ever seen.”

Chances have to be taken to be great, and Skubal wants to be great.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts has already picked up on that. “He’s built differently,” Roberts said. 

Roberts said he was struck by his focus, his humility, how he takes care of his body and what he is like as a teammate.

There was also something else: “He puts himself out there,” Roberts said.

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