Whicker: Trading Skubal doesn’t make sense for Tigers
There are rumors that the Detroit Tigers might trade two-time American League Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal this off-season.
December 24, 2025
By Mark Whicker
Canadian Baseball Network
The Detroit Tigers’ season lasted until the 15th inning of the clinching game of the American League Division Series, when they lost to the Seattle Mariners.
The Mariners’ season lasted until Game 7 of the American League Championship Series, when they lost to the Toronto Blue Jays.
The Blue Jays’ season lasted until the 11th inning of the seventh game of the World Series, when two Dodger outfielders collided and one of them still caught a ball.
This is what you think about in the off-season, when the dark 5 o’clock curtain comes down, and a wintry mix coats your windshield. Without much exaggeration, it could have been you.
But those are the thoughts that make you hit the gym before sunrise, and get you into the spring training clubhouse before anyone else. That little peek at Camelot, the one the Tigers got in October, gets them out of bed.
Alas, the headlines in Motown these days do not transmit that hope. They list all the ways that Tarik Skubal, their back-to-back Cy Young Award winner, should or should not be traded. Somehow the act of getting rid of your best player is seen as a path to progress, particularly when that player is the league’s best pitcher, and the best gate attraction for a franchise that has gone from 1.6 million fans to 1.8 to 2.4 in the past three years. Skubal can become a free agent in 2027, and he is a client of Scott Boras, and it’s easy to assume he’ll be a Dodger, Yankee or Met when the time comes. So why let him walk out the door for nothing? Trade Skubal now and bathe in the package of elite prospects at your doorstep.
This is based on the assumption that the Tigers can’t afford Skubal. They’re already paying him $20 million for 2026. They’re also paying Gleyber Torres $22.5 million, and his contract also expires next year. Same with $20 million starter Jack Flaherty. The Tigers are not playing in a small market, and their 2025 payroll ranked 15th among 30 major league clubs.
In 2027 Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the Dodgers will begin making $27 million. His total contract is $325 million. But the Blue Jays jolted the market when they gave Dylan Cease $210 million for seven years, or $30 million per. Cease was an 8-12 pitcher for San Diego last year with a 4.55 ERA, and he turns 29 this week, just as Skubal turned 29 in November. So Boras will be shooting for something historic. But if it comes down to money, the Tigers are not incapable of competing.
Remember, we’re talking about pitchers. As former Angels and Mariners general manager Bill Bavasi used to say, they have one tool, and it regularly gets sprained or torn or dislocated. Skubal had flexor tendon surgery in 2022 and returned on July 4, 2023. Since then, he has won 38 and lost 13 and has pitched 192 and 195 innings the past two full seasons.
But if we’re talking about money pitchers, Skubal has given up 23 hits in 39 postseason innings in 2024 and 2025. In six playoff starts, his WHIP (walks and hits to innings pitched) is a phenomenal 0.731 with 56 strikeouts and six walks. Skubal also got through the season with only three games of 100 or more pitches.
So there’s no question that Skubal would be anybody’s ace in 2026 and could lead almost anybody to the Promised Land. But why shouldn’t that “anybody” be Detroit?
Trading Skubal would be a massive middle finger to the fans who have stoically watched the Tigers rebuild from the Jim Leyland days, when they went to the World Series in 2012, then slipped to 47 wins in 2019. For Detroit fans of a certain age he is the new Mickey Lolich, without the motorcycle but with the same lefthanded, longshoreman’s build, and the same appetite for innings, adjusted for history. There are no dominant teams in the A.L. Central, and the Tigers will be contenders if they hang onto Skubal and he’s healthy. If not, they won’t be.
The front office is not abandoning hope for 2026. It has already extended reliever Kyle Finnegan and signed Kenley Jansen, the Cooperstown-bound closer who had his best year since 2019. Manager A.J. Hinch is not a huge fan of designated closers, but he demands much of his bullpen and he knows the Tigers needed help there. They were 14th in A.L. bullpen WHIP last season and blew 22 saves.
The desperation to trade one’s top asset for a bunch of fuzzy-cheeked question marks is borderline irrational. Who knows what 2027 will bring? No one is expecting a prolonged work stoppage, or a serious salary cap, but there could be a new CBA that will change the free-agency rules in some fashion.
The team that trades for Skubal now will have to sign him long-term or endure his free agency after the season. If the Tigers stumble through 2026 and find themselves in an untenable position at the trade deadline, they could trade Skubal then, to a contender that wants a late-season edge. and get a much better prospect package.
Bail-out trades don’t have a great history. The Expos traded Pedro Martinez and got pitchers Carl Pavano and Tony Armas. That hastened their disappearance. The Red Sox didn’t want to sign Mookie Betts and traded him to the Dodgers for Alex Verdugo, Jeter Downs and Connor Wong. You know the results there. The Marlins felt they couldn’t pay Miguel Cabrera, so they dealt him to Detroit for Cameron Maybin, Andrew Miller and three names to be waived later. As Tiger fans know, Cabrera spent 16 years in Detroit, won two MVPs and had an .890 OPS. For his career he became the seventh hitter to parlay 500 home runs with 3,000 hits.
The Padres made a deadline trade in 2022 to get Juan Soto from Washington. They weren’t in a position of strength. The Nationals asked for, and got, pitcher Mackenzie Gore, slugging prospect James Wood and shortstop J.J. Abrams. Soto has played for the Yankees and Mets since, and Gore, Wood and Abrams have become established players. No doubt the Padres overpaid. But the Nationals are still a cellar-dwelling team.
The Yankees traded Michael King, Randy Vasquez and two other pitchers for Soto and went to the 2024 World Series. Shortly after they were eliminated, Soto was in the clubhouse talking about his immediate free-agent options. That didn’t go over well, and Soto apparently had more relationship problems with the Mets.
Skubal doesn’t seem to be the clubhouse-lawyer type. He did spend a recent weekend in Detroit checking out the chances for a long-term deal. Nothing materialized.
Meanwhile, Dodger pitcher Tyler Glasnow is campaigning to get Skubal as a teammate. Maybe it’s inevitable, but it puts a lot of pressure on the scouting department to find another Skubal, another ninth-round draft pick from Seattle University who splashes with such impact. What’s important is the Tigers have somebody that everybody wants for at least one more season. That’s clear and real. Giving him up for the haze of the future doesn’t make sense. As one ex-MLB executive said the other night, “If they’re not trying to win, what are they in this for?”