Tarik Skubal has been about as automatic as it gets since Detroit shipped him to Los Angeles at the deadline, but Thursday night against St. Louis was the ugly outlier. The two-time reigning AL Cy Young winner got hit around from the jump, and by the time he was pulled he'd matched the worst hit total he's ever allowed in a big-league start.
Tarik Skubal's 2Ks in the 2nd.
The swagger from that second inning didn't last. Cardinals hitters kept finding grass and gaps all night, stacking single after single, and Skubal was already deep in season-high territory before he'd finished the third. It's the kind of start that doesn't show up as one bad pitch — it's a slow bleed, inning after inning, with nothing to point to as the moment it went wrong.
He battled through 5.2 innings before Los Angeles finally went to the bullpen, and the final line was rough: 10 hits, 2 earned runs, 6 strikeouts. Every one of the 10 hits was a single, which is its own kind of maddening — no one barreled him up for extra bases, St. Louis just kept slapping the ball into open grass all night.
Tarik Skubal tied a career high with 10 hits allowed tonight (all singles) across 5.2 innings where he surrendered two earned runs The other time he allowed 10 hits was July 22, 2024, a start where he went seven innings with one earned run
That 2024 outing is the useful contrast here. Skubal allowed the same 10 hits that day but only 1 earned run and went 7 full innings — proof that hit totals alone don't tell the whole story. This time the Cardinals actually cashed some of that traffic in, and Skubal was out of the game with 2 runs on the board before he could work into the 6th.
St. Louis manager Oli Marmol got aggressive managing his own lineup around it, too. With the game tight, he sent Alec Burleson up to pinch hit late, a move that doubled as a lineup trick — sliding him behind the plate afterward so the No. 9 hitter would still see extra at-bats down the stretch.
Alec Burleson is set to pinch-hit. #stlcards going for the game swing here. Oli Marmol sure does dig moments like this in the middle of the game. #Dodgers
For as many hits as the Cardinals piled up — 11 in all — they didn't have much thump to show for it. Jordan Walker's double was the only extra-base knock in the entire game, which made St. Louis' 2-1 win as much about opportunism as offense. Skubal will get another crack at it soon, but for one night the two-time Cy Young winner looked very hittable in his own ballpark.