Skip to content

'Very nervous' Skaggs rejoins Angels 2 years after Tommy John

Jayne Kamin-Oncea / USA TODAY Sports

Tyler Skaggs, the resilient Los Angeles Angels left-hander, has spent his entire adult life playing baseball professionally, and the 25-year-old is almost a half-decade removed from his MLB debut.

Still, he admitted, there will be some butterflies in his stomach when he takes the mound at Kauffman Stadium on Tuesday for his first MLB start since undergoing Tommy John surgery in August of 2014.

"I'm going to take it like a normal game," Skaggs told Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register. "It's not my debut. I've been here before. I know I'm going to be nervous, very nervous, but at the same time, I'll tell myself I've been here before. ... It's a big game for me. I put a lot of work into getting here. The work isn’t done. I don’t want to just get here. I want to stay here."

Skaggs, who was officially recalled from Triple-A on Tuesday, opted to take a more conservative approach to his recovery after having his ulnar collateral ligament replaced two years ago, with the former first-round pick (inspired by Matt Harvey) deciding to take a full 18 months to recuperate and foregoing any notion of pitching in a minor-league game in 2015.

He opened the 2016 campaign with Triple-A Salt Lake, and despite missing two months with shoulder tendinitis early in the year, Skaggs has dominated of late, crafting a 1.33 ERA with a 40 percent strikeout rate in five starts since returning.

“I think I took so long off of not throwing that my shoulder wasn’t used to throwing 100 pitches at a time,” he said. “There was some tendinitis in there. I took a few weeks off and then felt pretty good after.”

Now, Skaggs will look to resume an MLB career that began rather inauspiciously.

Traded to Arizona one year after being taken by Los Angeles in the first round of the 2009 draft, Skaggs managed a 5.43 ERA in parts of two seasons with the Diamondbacks, then got shipped back to Anaheim ahead of the 2014 campaign.

In his lone, injury-shortened season with the Angels, Skaggs posted a 4.30 ERA (84 ERA+) with a 1.21 WHIP over 18 starts before hurting his elbow.

Daily Newsletter

Get the latest trending sports news daily in your inbox