Skubal’s increased sinker use brought misses and a costly home run

William Contreras fouled off a slider, sinker and four-seamer with the bases loaded and two outs in the fifth. Tarik Skubal’s next changeup finished in the dirt. He returned to a 97.1 mph four-seamer, and Contreras sent it to right field for the out that ended a 26-pitch inning.

The escape kept Milwaukee’s lead at one run, but the inning had already changed the game. Skubal allowed two runs on five hits and two walks over five innings, striking out seven on 81 pitches in the Dodgers’ 2–1 loss in NLCS Game 1 at American Family Field on October 11.

His strikeouts came mainly from fastballs. A larger sinker share produced six misses and two strikeout finishes, but that same classification also yielded Brice Turang’s tying home run. The useful explanation has to retain both sides of that result rather than treating either the seven strikeouts or the loss as the whole outing.

More sinkers, fewer changeups

The primary baseline is Skubal’s 925 physical pitches in 10 regular-season Dodgers starts from August 4 through September 25. That current-club sample keeps his earlier Detroit work and postseason appearances separate. It is a defined comparison window, not his full 2026 season, and no coaching explanation is inferred from the team change.

Skubal threw 33 four-seamers, 21 sinkers and 14 changeups, with seven curveballs and six sliders. His sinker share rose from 13.9% in the Dodgers baseline to 25.9%, while changeups fell from 26.4% to 17.3%. Four-seam use stayed near its prior level, moving from 40.3% to 40.7%. The larger sinker contribution was a selection difference rather than a wholesale move away from the four-seamer.

Both fastball types averaged 97.5 to 97.6 mph. Hitters missed six of 15 attempts against each. The four-seamer’s 40.0% whiff rate compared with 27.7% in the baseline; the sinker’s 40.0% compared with 16.1%. Those 15-attempt game samples are small, but they show where 12 of his 13 total misses came from.

Only one of six attempts against the changeup missed, compared with 58 of 142 in the baseline. Four strikeouts ended on four-seamers, two on sinkers and one on a changeup. Those completed plate appearances are distinct from pitch-level misses. Skubal also collected 15 called strikes, including four with sinkers, so taking a pitch was another route into a difficult count.

Milwaukee’s handedness changed the opportunities available. Skubal threw 26 pitches to left-handed hitters and 55 to right-handed hitters, against 194 and 731 in the baseline. Sinker share rose strongly against right-handers, from 61 of 731 pitches to 12 of 55. Against left-handers, nine of 26 pitches were sinkers, close to the baseline’s 68 of 194. The overall increase should not be described as an identical change against every hitter.

Contact and the fifth-inning sequence supplied the runs

Turang reached a 2–0 count to begin the fourth and hit a 95.5 mph sinker for a 102.5 mph home run. The pitch crossed just outside the outer horizontal edge of the defined ball-center rectangle, within its recorded vertical boundaries. That location establishes where the ball passed the plate, not where Skubal meant to put it.

Milwaukee produced seven hard-hit balls among 12 measured contacts. The 89.4 mph average includes Cooper Pratt’s 40.4 mph sacrifice bunt, so that overall mean should not obscure the harder swings around it. Andrew Vaughn’s double, Jake Bauers’ single and Jackson Chourio’s fifth-inning single all reached at least 95 mph.

The decisive fifth began with a Garrett Mitchell walk. Pratt’s first-pitch bunt moved him to second, and Luis Lara hit Skubal’s first changeup of their plate appearance at 101.9 mph for the go-ahead single. Joey Ortiz’s groundout advanced Lara, Chourio singled and Turang walked before the Contreras confrontation.

Skubal had needed 55 pitches through four innings and used another 26 in the fifth. His four-seamer averaged 97.1 mph in that final inning, based on 14 measured pitches, compared with 97.5 for the outing. The recorded pace and contact do not establish a physical problem or prove that the altered pitch mix caused the runs.

His finish was a useful out after a damaging sequence. The fastballs produced most of his missed swings, while walks, a bunt and hard contact supplied the two runs that survived as the final margin. Another start can test whether the larger right-handed sinker share persists and whether the changeup returns to its stronger Dodgers swing response.