Dodgers' NLCS meltdown is making Tigers' Tarik Skubal trade look better by the minute

The Dodgers might not be on the brink quite yet, but they've already been pushed closer to it than anyone expected. In Game 2 of the NLCS, they couldn't capitalize on a waterfall of errors and misplays from the Brewers, the most fundamentally sound team in baseball, and lost 7-4 to go down 2-0 in the series.

There's a lot wrong with the Dodgers right now, and it's mostly on their offense. Shohei Ohtani looks like a broken man, and timely hitting is nowhere to be found. LA scored four runs but only collected three actual hits through nine innings.

Tarik Skubal was chased out of Game 1 after five innings; Yoshinobu Yamamoto after a stunning 2 2/3, with 75 pitches thrown and three runs allowed. The Brewers' approach against one of the best postseason pitchers of all time was just too good for even Yamamoto to overcome.

There's something akin to unity happening in baseball right now, watching the sport's greatest villains behind exposed. Tigers fans can take a unique kind of glee from this. If the Dodgers don't three-peat, Detroit all but won the Skubal trade.

Dodgers' downfall is looking very good to Tigers after Tarik Skubal trade

Sure, there's a world in which none of the prospects from that trade work out. Fans will never know if the Tigers could've hung onto contention if they'd kept Skubal, and there's something a little haunting about that.

But the Dodgers traded for three months of Skubal so that they could win the World Series again. The Brewers, who were also engaged in talks with Detroit at the deadline, backed off because they weren't willing to sacrifice that much of their future. Commentators were unkind to Milwaukee when he went to LA because these Brewers don't take risks like that, but what if that risk was what sunk their World Series hopes and kept them from reaching yet another Fall Classic? When would they finally get serious about winning?

Logan Henderson, a guy they weren't willing to send to the Tigers, outdueled Yamamoto. The Brewers are winning without Skubal. The Dodgers, who gave up so much to get him, only got five innings out of him in Game 1.

There may not even be a Game 5 in which Skubal can redeem himself (knock on wood). The Dodgers could've done all of that for nothing.

It's no skin off their backs, ultimately, given the strength of their prospect pipeline, but it's still a victory for Detroit.

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