{"id":483515,"date":"2026-10-03T04:22:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T04:22:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/483515\/"},"modified":"2026-10-03T04:22:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T04:22:13","slug":"tarik-skubal-to-start-for-dodgers-in-nlds-game-1-vs-braves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/483515\/","title":{"rendered":"Tarik Skubal to start for Dodgers in NLDS Game 1 vs. Braves"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dodgers<\/a> left-hander Tarik Skubal<\/a> thought he could go the distance when he got through seven shutout innings in San Francisco last week<\/a> on just 75 pitches.<\/p>\n

Then Dodgers manager Dave Roberts<\/a> greeted him in the dugout with a handshake and the news: \u201cGet ready for Game 1.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Dodgers made it official Friday: Skubal, the two-time Cy Young Award winner acquired from the Detroit Tigers at the trade deadline, will start Game 1 of the National League Division Series against the Atlanta Braves<\/a>. First pitch is scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an honor and a privilege to start Game 1 and have the trust in the coaching staff and my teammates and the organization to take the ball and go out there and do what I can do to put our team in a position to win,\u201d Skubal said. \u201cI\u2019m excited for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Skubal is no stranger to postseason baseball. He made three starts in each of the Tigers\u2019 postseason runs the last two years. All of them were on the road.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I walk out onto the field in a playoff game, it\u2019s usually received with a lot of boos,\u201d Skubal said. \u201cSo I\u2019m excited to get some cheers in there for us. And to pitch at home, I think it\u2019s going to be a ton of fun in front of this atmosphere.<\/p>\n

\u201cHopefully everyone is drinking a lot of water and staying hydrated. It\u2019s going to be a hot one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weather reports forecast the temperature reaching 100 degrees Saturday.<\/p>\n

Skubal, after leaving the only organization he\u2019d known, has been every bit the top-of-the-rotation starter he was advertised to be. In 10 starts for the Dodgers, he posted a 2.61 ERA. And he finished the regular season with a gem against the Giants: seven three-hit innings on an efficient pitch count, cut short only by the Dodgers\u2019 postseason plan.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

\u201cI loved delivering that message,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cI don\u2019t always get to deliver good messages, and that was a good one, a fun one. And he was great because obviously with this ball club, it\u2019s an easy kind of thought that [right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto] would be the Game 1 starter, absolutely. So Tarik was very respectful of Yoshinobu, but we have thoughts on why we do things, and all these guys are all-in for whatever we decide.\u201d<\/p>\n

The full scope of the Dodgers\u2019 rotation plan was not immediately clear, but Blake Snell and Yamamoto are expected to pitch in Game 2 and 3, not necessarily in that order.<\/p>\n

Yamamoto pitched to batters during the Dodgers\u2019 workout Wednesday. If he takes his usual five days of rest, that would line him up to pitch Game 3 in Atlanta on Tuesday. That would also line him up for NLCS Game 2 and Game 6 \u2014 as long as the Dodgers advance.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a good process, appreciating that the most important thing is this series right now,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cBut if you have talented arms at your disposal, it\u2019s prudent to kind of map out potentially how they could line up, and that\u2019s just doing your due diligence.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we are very fortunate because we have four guys essentially that you could really kind of pick through to figure out what\u2019s the best way to deploy all four starters … that\u2019s the exercise, but it starts with having four talented guys.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a luxury other teams don\u2019t have. The Braves certainly didn\u2019t when they used ace Chris Sale in relief Thursday in Game 3 of their wild-card series against the Philadelphia Phillies.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat makes a team like that dangerous is they\u2019ve already been in the fight,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cThey\u2019ve already got their intensity up, they can manage emotions, they\u2019ve come out of the series with some momentum, coming out of winning a series.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe advantage for us is we have an opportunity to not let their pitching staff come up for air, and how do you do that? You have to exhaust the starter tomorrow. You have to get in their pen, and you have to have them deploy arms as soon as possible and get that carousel going and continue to beat starters.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dodgers left-hander Tarik Skubal thought he could go the distance when he got through seven shutout innings in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[10445,3560,426,10665,423,6753,48,52,51,47,50,49,63,10252,16714,189339,431,428,18796,18471,68],"class_list":["post-483515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-braves","tag-dodger","tag-dodgers","tag-era","tag-game","tag-knowledge","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-mound","tag-option","tag-postseason-plan","tag-rest","tag-start","tag-starter","tag-tarik-skubal","tag-tuesday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}