NEW YORK — Will they or won’t they?
Rarely has the trade deadline landscape been so dominated by one player – with no clear ‘For Sale’ sign on him. Two-time Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal is that player. He could have a big impact on any team that acquires him before next Monday, moving the needle on playoff odds more than any other player likely to move this week – and it’s not even close. A closer like Aroldis Chapman or Mason Miller would be a respectable but distant second.
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Through Sunday, the Detroit Tigers were six games under .500 (50-56), 3½ games out of the last playoff spot in the American League with four other teams between them and that spot. Skubal (represented by Scott Boras) will be a free agent at the end of this season, almost a lock to leave Detroit and sign a massive contract elsewhere, leaving the Tigers with nothing but a compensatory draft pick to show for it.
So they have to trade him, right?
But, wait – since Skubal returned from elbow surgery on June 13, the Tigers have gone 21-14, the second-best record in the scramble of mediocrity that is the American League. Keep that up and they’re in the postseason with Skubal giving them their best chance to make something of a postseason invite. And Skubal is a “generational talent” (a phrase you are certain to hear from Boras next winter), the kind you build around and the kind you are unlikely to replicate from even the best package of prospects.
So they can’t trade him, right?
That free agency complicates matters, forcing teams to calculate how much they are willing to give up to acquire Skubal on a rental basis. How much are 8-10 regular-season starts from Skubal and an unknown number of postseason starts worth in prospect capital?
Each year, Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman hopes to reach the trade deadline with no glaring needs to fill, no compelling reason to overpay what it takes to acquire players in the midseason market. This year, he might have succeeded.
“We feel really good about our roster, feel really good about the depth,” Friedman said of a team that was an MLB-best 67-39 through Sunday. “So I would say that we’re going into this deadline without necessarily having an acute need – which is definitely the goal in the offseason. That said, there have been a number of moves we have made closer to the deadline (in past years) that weren’t necessarily on our radar 10 days, two weeks out – just from opportunities that pop up.”
Skubal represents quite an opportunity.
The Dodgers rode four starters – Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Shohei Ohtani, Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow – to their 2025 World Series championship. But currently only one of those four is pitching for the Dodgers.
The Dodgers have to make their own calculation on when each of those players – plus their IL neighbors, relief pitcher Edwin Diaz, utility man Kiké Hernandez and catcher Will Smith – will return and how effective they will be come October.
“Everything on that front has been positive,” Friedman said.
Diaz and Hernandez are expected back this week. Snell has made two starts on a rehab assignment. Glasnow has finally progressed in his throwing program. And the Dodgers “feel very confident that Will will be back,” according to Friedman.
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“Nice trade deadline, huh?” first baseman Freddie Freeman joked about the returning players, a veteran well-versed in deadline cliches.
How would Freeman upgrade his assessment if the Dodgers land Skubal?
Naming no names, Friedman modestly acknowledged the Dodgers’ history of landing elite players, the kind that it takes to raise the talent level of a team that already has more talent than any other.
“There aren’t a lot of those guys in the game to begin with and even fewer get moved,” Friedman said. “So over the years that has been an area that we will stay connected to and have lined up on a good number of them whether by trade or free agent signing. But that is an area of the market that we will always be engaged with.”
They aren’t alone in targeting good players, of course.
Imagine the Milwaukee Brewers (66-39) going into the postseason with Jacob Misiorowski and Skubal at the front of their rotation – or the Atlanta Braves (62-43) with Chris Sale and Skubal or the Philadelphia Phillies (57-49) with Cristopher Sánchez, Skubal and Zack Wheeler.
If acquiring Skubal wouldn’t necessarily raise the Dodgers’ playoff odds that much, watching him go to one of their National League rivals might decrease them.
And so – they lurk. That is the word that comes up often when execs from other teams talk about the Dodgers’ strategy at the trade deadline – they lurk on the market, ready to make a move if and when they see an opportunity.
So how does one lurk? Friedman laughs at the question.
“First of all, I think the depth of our system puts us in position to have a lot of different conversations and also puts us in position to field some calls from teams that want to try to target a specific guy or guys from our system which allows us to participate in a lot of different conversations whether direct or three-way,” Friedman said.
“We feel really good about our team as we go into the last (week) here with a very opportunistic mindset.”
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