Tarik Skubal struck out six Chicago Cubs hitters in six innings on Tuesday and still lost, 5-1, and by Wednesday night the Los Angeles Dodgers had proven no trade-deadline arm was ever going to fix a lineup that forgot how to hit.
That’s the real headline. The Dodgers’ losing streak is now at six games, their longest skid since a seven-game slide in July 2025, and the front office’s biggest answer to the championship question hasn’t delivered a single win yet. The rotation was never the issue.
Wednesday supplied the uglier image. Shohei Ohtani led off the game with a home run, the kind of swing that used to set the tone for a Dodgers night. Pete Crow-Armstrong needed one pitch to erase it, a first-pitch leadoff shot of his own in the bottom of the first that flipped the momentum before Ohtani had finished his trot.
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Crow-Armstrong wasn’t finished there. He added a second homer, a double, and four RBI, going 3-for-5 and becoming the first Cubs player ever with back-to-back 25-homer, 25-steal seasons.
Two Pete Crow-Armstrong home runs, and the Dodgers still had no answer.
Ohtani’s second homer of the day went to waste too. Max Muncy hit a three-run shot in the eighth and Mookie Betts collected four hits, and none of it was enough because Los Angeles needed length from a bullpen that had nothing left to give. Nico Hoerner added three hits, Shota Imanaga worked five innings before handing off, and Jacob Webb closed it out. The Cubs completed the sweep and have improved to 32-15 since June 11, good enough to sit atop the NL wild-card race.
The Dodgers’ losing streak hit six with that loss, and it didn’t arrive out of nowhere.
They’d already been swept by the Red Sox before the Cubs finished the job, and across both sweeps they were outscored 42-22. A lineup built around some of the best hitters alive keeps running into the same wall. Adding a pitcher doesn’t move it an inch.
Which brings it back to Tarik Skubal, the arm the Dodgers gave up Zyhir Hope, River Ryan, and Brady Smith to get from Detroit. Skubal’s own Dodgers debut, one night earlier, was on its own terms exactly what they paid for against these same Cubs: six innings, four hits, two earned runs, six strikeouts, 85 pitches. His only real mistake was a third-inning homer to Dansby Swanson. He still lost, 5-1, one night before the sweep was finished.
I watched that box score twice and still don’t understand how a pitching line that clean turns into a loss.
It has nothing to do with Skubal and everything to do with a lineup that went quiet at the exact moment it needed to carry a new ace. This isn’t new for Crow-Armstrong, either — revisit the last time Crow-Armstrong swept a slumping contender and the pattern holds.
The Dodgers didn’t lose three games to the Cubs this week. They lost the plot, and no deadline arm fixes a lineup that forgot how to hit at the worst possible time.
Skubal’s fine. The team that traded for him isn’t.
