Skaggs quite a success story against Royals

KANSAS CITY — Debbie Skaggs, a high school softball coach going on three decades, could tell her son was eager as soon he took the mound on Tuesday, for his first Major League game in nearly two years. She noted how his right shoulder was flying open, how his delivery was speeding up, how his body wasn’t staying over the rubber quite long enough.

Later, Tyler Skaggs confirmed it himself after delivering seven shutout innings in the Angels’ 13-0 win over the Royals at Kauffman Stadium.

“Everything just felt really fast in that first at-bat,” he said, “and after that it started to slow down.”

Skaggs walked Alcides Escobar on four straight pitches — all fastballs, none of which traveled slower than 92.8 mph — and didn’t issue another walk the rest of the night. The 25-year-old left-hander was solid in his return from Tommy John surgery in August 2014, scattering only three hits and striking out five.

It was as if Skaggs had never left.

“A fun game for me,” Skaggs said. “It went a lot better than I expected, to say the least.”

Skaggs worked mostly with a 93- to 94-mph four-seam fastball and a sweeping curve, a pitch he used to register a couple of first-inning strikeouts. He put only two runners in scoring position, required 88 pitches to record 21 outs, and, perhaps most importantly, he provided some semblance of hope to an organization that has been decimated by the debilitating injuries of three young starting pitchers.

“We have great expectations for him,” said manager Mike Scioscia, who has seen Garrett Richards, Andrew Heaney and Nick Tropeano all sustain damaged ulnar collateral ligaments this season. “He’s an important part of what we’re trying to do. We expected to have him maybe a little bit earlier, but he’s ready now, and we’re happy to have him in our rotation.”

Former scouting director Eddie Bane took Skaggs with the 40th overall pick in the 2009 Draft, just before drafting Richards and …

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