Tyler Skaggs impresses as Angels continue to dominate in 13-0 win over Royals

Most nights since July 31, 2014, Tyler Skaggs fell asleep thinking of this day. Most mornings, he awoke imagining it. But it took so long to become real, and now that it was, the pace of the game felt so fast.

The first pitch Skaggs threw from a major league mound since he ripped the ulnar collateral ligament in his left elbow was a fastball in the dirt. The second was a fastball way outside, the third way inside and the fourth too low. He walked Alcides Escobar to begin his first big-league start after Tommy John surgery.

Johnny Giavotella approached the mound to offer encouragement. Skaggs stepped off the mound, took two big breaths and tried to settle his nerves. His next pitch was a 94 mph fastball on the outside corner. He faced 23 more Kansas City hitters Tuesday night at Kauffman Stadium, and he walked none of them. He struck out five, yielded only three singles and confronted no noteworthy Royals rallies over seven scoreless innings. All the while, the Angels’ offense worked as an apparatus, putting on baserunner after baserunner in a 13-0 rout.

“I didn’t expect much,” Skaggs said. “It went a lot better than I expected, to say the least.”

Skaggs kept the first ball he threw as evidence that he had reached his goal. The scuffs prove his road here was fraught with problems. When he underwent surgery in August 2014, the Angels announced Skaggs would miss all of 2015, but he believed for nearly a year that he could make it back by September. He did not.

He adjusted his gaze to this season’s opening-day rotation. He did not make that. He hoped for May, but in May, he suffered a setback: His shoulder hurt.

Finally, the day came. He had pitched in this ballpark once before, in July 2012, when he threw a scoreless fifth inning during the All-Star Futures Game, a month before his major league debut as an Arizona Diamondback. The last pitch he threw that day was a curveball, starting at 12 o’clock and landing at 6, flailed at by Boston phenom and future All-Star Xander Bogaerts.

“Man, that curveball, bro,” Bogaerts told the Arizona Republic then. “I’m still visualizing that thing. That’s the only pitch I was really impressed by the whole day was that curveball.”

Skaggs punctuated his first inning Tuesday by plopping in the same kind of curveball to Kendrys Morales. He lost the feel for it later, but threw 22 among his 88 pitches. Most of the rest were four-seam fastballs.

“That’s pretty good stuff he’s featuring out there tonight,” Royals Manager Ned Yost said.

Facing Dillon Gee, Chris Young and then Chien-Ming Wang, three veteran right-handers having rough seasons, the Angels’ offense erupted early and often. To begin, Yunel Escobar lined his 27th leadoff single of 2016 and Kole Calhoun quickly doubled him in. They scored twice more come the fourth. Carlos Perez launched a home run in the sixth, and Escobar singled in a run in the eighth.

Their offense merged into the absurd in the ninth, when they assembled seven runs on seven hits, two walks and a hit-by-pitch, before Yost pulled the plug on pitchers-as-pitchers and inserted hard-throwing catcher Drew Butera, an ex-Angel. He finished the inning.

Escobar had five hits, Perez had four, and the Angels amassed some 27 baserunners; the Royals reached four times.

The Angels aided Skaggs with several graceful defensive plays. Escobar speared a Salvador Perez line drive. Kole Calhoun doubled Paulo Orlando off second base and later dove gracefully to catch a Morales flare.

He started firing his fastball at 93 mph and got it up to 96 twice in the second inning, the two fastest pitches he had thrown in the majors. By the fourth, it was more often registering 90 or 91 mph, but he ramped it back up toward the end of his outing, retiring eight consecutive Royals on his way out.

In Skaggs’ penultimate rehab start, he faced the Royals’ triple-A affiliate, the Omaha Storm Chasers. He struck out 14 of the 22 batters he faced that night, statistics Yost recited after Tuesday’s game, and then dominated to the same degree in his next start, eliciting excitement across the organization.

His debut fulfilled those expectations. Skaggs became the 11th pitcher to start for the Angels this season; three of the others have succumbed to the same injury he did. He texted Andrew Heaney, Garrett Richards and Nick Tropeano after each of their tears, offering support.

Because those men are absent, the Angels need Skaggs desperately to fill a void this season and to provide hope for next. They will treat the 25-year-old left-hander carefully. And so when he walked off the mound following Tuesday’s seventh inning, 88 pitches on his ledger, he knew Mike Scioscia would not let him pitch another inning.

“As soon as I walked off, he had that look,” Skaggs said. “It’s been a while, but I know that look.”

pedro.moura@latimes.com

Twitter: @pedromoura

UPDATES:

July 27, 6:45 a.m.: This article was updated with additional quotes and details.

This article was originally published July 26 at 10:55 p.m.