Inside Skubal trade negotiations: Why Tigers chose Dodgers dealplayJeff Passan: ‘The Dodgers have assembled the Avengers’ (0:54)Jeff Passan
THE CALLS WENT out Saturday afternoon, earlier than anticipated. The Detroit Tigers were ready to trade the best pitcher in the world, and they needed best-and-final offers from the teams still involved in the biggest baseball sweepstakes of the summer.
Exactly what those suitors were willing to surrender for Tarik Skubal, the 29-year-old left-hander who has won back-to-back American League Cy Young Awards, Detroit didn’t know. But over the previous 24 hours, the Tigers had canvassed the market and emerged with the sense that multiple teams were willing to meet their asking price. Rather than wait until the 6 p.m. ET deadline Monday to shop offers and pit teams against one another and create a bidding war, they wanted to move.
Earlier in the day, word filtered around front offices that the Seattle Mariners were listening on right-hander George Kirby, a pitcher whose performance paled compared with Skubal’s but who won’t reach free agency until after the 2028 season. Skubal, on the other hand, is slated to hit free agency after the season. The Tigers knew they were primed to land a haul of talent for what amounted to 10 regular-season starts by Skubal and, best-case scenario, five more in the postseason — and they feared if they waited too long, their best options could opt for a pitcher like Kirby with multiple years of control and potentially collapse the Skubal market.
Such fears, according to conversations with more than a dozen people directly involved in the Skubal discussions, were well-founded. Teams were reluctant to stake their entire deadline on the possibility of acquiring Skubal, lest they find themselves on the losing end and reach 6:01 p.m. empty-handed.
Already the discussions were making involved teams uncomfortable. Of all the markets in baseball — free agency, offseason trades, draft, international free agency — none is as inflated as the trade deadline. Teams looking to add do so knowing their analytical models will suggest they’re goobers for even entertaining the prospect of deals with such negative expected value. The prospect of adding the sport’s premier ace calmed such concerns enough to stretch beyond typical limitations but not enough to put disciplined teams on tilt. Regardless of Skubal’s potential impact on any pennant race or World Series run, sources reported, no team involved in the discussions was willing to budge much from the offer it had presented in the cursory stages of talks.
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So when Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris placed the calls Saturday afternoon to inform the suitors of Detroit’s timing, they understood what lay ahead. Skubal would essentially go via blind bidding. Some teams presented multiple concepts so as not to pigeonhole themselves. Others fired their best bolts and reported a prayer.
In the end, that the Los Angeles Dodgers emerged the winners came as little surprise. This is what they do. This is who they are. And as much as the Dodgers intellectually loathe the idea of big-ticket deadline dealing, they have become baseball’s foremost practitioner of the craft — from Yu Darvish to Manny Machado to Max Scherzer and Trea Turner — because their abundant resources allow them to operate in a value-negative space without severe consequences. For all the minor league talent the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays possess, all the appetite the Atlanta Braves and New York Yankees and Chicago Cubs had to overpay for Skubal, no team matched the Dodgers’ combination of talent that appealed to Detroit and a willingness to spend it.
And so it was the Dodgers, again, as it was with Kyle Tucker and Roki Sasaki and Tanner Scott and Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Shohei Ohtani. It was the Dodgers, again, reminding the other 29 teams that they won’t be observers when one of the game’s great talents can be had.
The loathing of the Dodgers — the salaries they’ve deferred, the money they’ve shielded from revenue sharing through a sweetheart TV deal, the stranglehold they possess over the game — always seems as if it has apexed. And then, they add another star, and the caterwauling re-emerges, despite the fact that the Dodgers are doing everything within the parameters of the collective bargaining agreement.
No matter how crushing a blow to those who claim the Dodgers are ruining baseball and regardless of what conspiracy theories exist about the deal, it was, very simply, a baseball trade, and how it came to be was months in the making.
Despite entering the season with World Series aspirations, a dreadful May left the Tigers with little choice but to say goodbye to Tarik Skubal at the deadline. AP Photo/Paul SancyaFOR THE PAST two months, the Tigers had hoped to avoid Saturday. Not only had they held on to Skubal through the offseason — when many thought they’d deal him because owner Chris Ilitch had zero intentions of guaranteeing him the $400 million-plus he’s set to command in free agency — they added free agent Framber Valdez and elevated top prospect Kevin McGonigle onto their Opening Day roster. They entered the season as heavy favorites in the pitiable AL Central.
Then, Skubal had surgery to remove bone chips from his elbow May 7, amid the Tigers’ 6-22 record that constituted one of the worst months in franchise history. It created a deficit from which the Tigers never fully recovered. It didn’t matter that in games outside of May, the Tigers have the AL’s best record and MLB’s best run differential. May happened, and it doomed them.
Still, the Tigers didn’t fully commit to unloading Skubal until July 29, five days before the deadline, when they blew a 7-0 lead in Skubal’s final start and lost in 12 innings to the Baltimore Orioles, dropping Detroit to 51-58. At that point, the front office weighed the team’s case not to just keep Skubal through the end of the season but add around him. The Tigers’ place in the standings made that a straightforward no — not when trading away Skubal and others would net at least $100 million in surplus value and, likely, more.
They had started preparing weeks earlier for both scenarios, discussing priorities, potential suitors and strategy. When the time to discuss a Skubal deal arrived, Harris knew whom he wanted, and he did not intend to waste anyone’s time if they were not comfortable with his demands.
For the Rays to be in the mix, they needed to include their top prospect, outfielder Theo Gillen, a first-round steal taken with the No. 18 pick in a 2024 draft that might rival 2005 as the best this century. Tampa Bay, whose operating philosophy requires homegrown talent on inexpensive deals, declined to make Gillen available. With their second- and third-best prospects (catchers Caden Bodine and Nathan Flewelling) sharing a position with Detroit’s Dillon Dingler, the best catcher in baseball, the Rays’ chances at landing Skubal ended before they really began.
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The Yankees dabbled in the conversations, though their unwillingness to cede shortstop George Lombard Jr. handicapped them. The Braves didn’t have a standout prospect such as Gillen or Lombard, but they possessed enough young starting pitching to at least wheedle their way into the conversation. The Cubs desperately needed starting pitching — and recognized quickly they lacked what Detroit sought in return.
And that wasn’t necessarily a major-league-ready starting pitcher and a close-to-the-big-leagues hitter. Contrary to suggestions otherwise, the Tigers were not demanding position-specific returns. They targeted talent of any manner and variety, and it led to two teams separating themselves from the pack.
For Milwaukee, the opportunity to pair Skubal with Jacob Misiorowski, the best pitcher in baseball this season, and offer a real hurdle for the Dodgers animated the Brewers’ trade deadline. The front office had built a juggernaut — three consecutive division titles, seven playoff spots in eight years — despite ranking among the lowest payrolls in baseball. The Dodgers carry a cash payroll of $339 million and face a luxury tax bill of nearly $180 million. The Brewers’ entire team is making $144 million.
The Brewers immediately told Detroit they wouldn’t include 19-year-old shortstop Jesús Made, the No. 1 prospect in baseball, but Milwaukee’s minor league depth ran far deeper. Going into deadline season, ESPN prospect analyst Kiley McDaniel’s top 100 list featured seven Brewers. Two AL executives reported their internal lists included seven, too. Accordingly, the Brewers’ list of untouchables went beyond Made. They wouldn’t move shortstop Cooper Pratt or outfielder Luis Lara, both of whom signed long-term contracts before their major league debuts. Right-hander Logan Henderson, with five more years of club control, was off-limits as well.
Inside the Brewers’ war room were go-for-it advocates, stay-the-course dogmatists and those in between, recycling the same tortured inner monologue ad infinitum: We have to go for it … but what if it doesn’t work? What if, like after the ballyhooed 2008 acquisition of left-handed ace CC Sabathia, it winds up just the same, with a first-round playoff collapse?
The other team lurking, of course, was the Dodgers. Despite picking at the back end of the first round every year, Los Angeles has still built a farm system that rivals Milwaukee’s and Tampa Bay’s as the game’s finest. They did it via international signings. (Los Angeles was clear it would not deal its own No. 1 prospect, 21-year-old Josue De Paula, a Brooklyn-born outfielder signed at 16 out of the Dominican Republic.) They did it through trades. (Outfielder Mike Sirota came to the organization in a deal for Gavin Lux, whom the Dodgers had drafted and developed.) They did it in the draft. (Their first pick last year, left-hander Zach Root, is already at Double-A.)
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Even if the Tigers didn’t necessarily need a balanced package, they preferred one. And of all the teams, Los Angeles could best fulfill that desire. The Dodgers had nine minor league outfielders who would be among the two or three best at the position in every other organization. They had major-league-ready pitchers (hard-throwing 28-year-old right-hander River Ryan and 26-year-old right-hander Emmet Sheehan) and another with ace-caliber ceiling (21-year-old Christian Zazueta, acquired in a trade with the Yankees for Caleb Ferguson). The Dodgers had plenty of infield options: shortstop Emil Morales, middle infielder Kellon Lindsey and third baseman Chase Harlan.
All of the packages and possibilities led to near-unanimity among other front offices that the Dodgers would ultimately land Skubal. Because beyond the talent, any qualms they might harbor about negative-value trades are decidedly outweighed by their quest to become the first NL team in history to win three consecutive World Series.
To the Tigers, none of that mattered. Resigning themselves to trading Skubal was difficult enough. He could go to Los Angeles, he could go to Milwaukee — he could get his ring on Saturn, for all they cared. They simply wanted to salvage a piece of their most unfortunate 2026. And when the offers started rolling in early in the evening, they knew they would find some silver lining.
The Dodgers’ package included Ryan, outfielder Zyhir Hope and High-A right-hander Brady Smith. Milwaukee’s, headlined by 19-year-old shortstop Luis Peña — regarded by most public lists as a top-20 prospect in the game — included two other players, too. In the early evening, Harris met with Ilitch, general manager Jeff Greenberg and the rest of the team’s brain trust to debate the merits of each offer.
The Tigers reached consensus about 10 minutes before first pitch at Double-A Tulsa, where Hope — like Ryan, a prospect seen by some as top 50 in the game and others closer to the back end of top 100 lists — was scheduled to play. Harris called Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations, and told him they had a deal. He needed just one thing: for Friedman to get on the phone and yank Hope from Tulsa’s lineup. He was about to be a Tiger.
When Tulsa unveiled that Hope was scratched, antennae around baseball went up. Maybe he tweaked something. Perhaps he was under the weather. He could be part of a deal, but even that didn’t mean it was for Skubal. Really, it was just dart-throwing around the increasingly obvious truth that grew ever clearer when Tulsa offered no explanation for Hope’s absence: The Los Angeles Dodgers, already featuring a rotation larded with talent, were about to land the first reigning back-to-back Cy Young winner to be traded since Roger Clemens in 1999.
The Tigers and Dodgers exchanged medical records and put their team doctors to work. For nearly three hours, they scrutinized documents and imaging. Skubal’s arm was already familiar to Dodgers team doctor Neal ElAttrache, who in May had used new nanoscope technology to clean up Skubal’s elbow and halve the typical return time to the field. Skubal left the Tigers’ bench with teammates in the middle of their game in Sacramento. Inside the clubhouse, he received word that the medicals cleared and he was going to be a Dodger. The other players involved received word around the same time, and at 11:31 p.m. ET, the news broke publicly.
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Outside of greater Los Angeles, utter disgust followed. Why the Dodgers? Why always the Dodgers? And was this really all they had to give up to land the sport’s best pitcher? A 28-year-old “prospect”?
A middle infielder who dabbled in pitching at Division II UNC-Pembroke, Ryan was drafted in the 11th round after his senior year by the San Diego Padres, for whom he played a dozen games at shortstop in the Arizona Complex League. The next spring, before he had thrown a professional pitch, San Diego traded Ryan to the Dodgers for Matt Beaty, who hit .093 for the Padres before they cut ties with him in September.
The Dodgers converted Ryan to a full-time pitcher, and in his first season, he struck out 70 in 47⅔ innings. He made it to Triple-A in 2023, then spent a four-start stint with the big league club in 2024, posting a 1.33 ERA in 20⅓ innings before undergoing Tommy John surgery in August 2024. He returned this year, and though his ERA in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League is 4.46, his 43 strikeouts and eight walks with only one home run allowed in 36⅓ innings suggest better is to come.
Pitchers are an inherently risky population, and Ryan’s injury history — this year, hamstring issues have limited him — made him even more accessible. Despite those concerns and only 329⅔ innings thrown over the past decade, the Tigers coveted Ryan. Because if he were consistently healthy, his stuff — a five-pitch mix, with a fastball that tickles 100 mph, plus a curveball, changeup, slider and cutter — would have put Ryan, who shares some similarities to a young Jacob deGrom, on the don’t-bother-asking list with De Paula. Instead, he is the fulcrum of this deal. Similar to deGrom, a college shortstop who converted to pitching full time after being selected with a late-round draft pick, Ryan gets off-the-charts grades on his arsenal from scouts and models. Only health stands between him and excellence.
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Adding him to a rotation that already features a pair of young, controllable starters with triple-digit fastballs (Troy Melton and Jackson Jobe), plus Valdez and the returning Reese Olson or Keider Montero, sounded awfully appealing to the Tigers. As did eventually slotting Hope — a 5-foot-10, 230-pound bundle of muscle who last spring squatted 850 pounds — alongside top center field prospect Max Clark and three-time All-Star left fielder Riley Greene.
Pair the rotation and outfield with an infield that includes a rookie All-Star shortstop in McGonigle, an All-Star catcher in his prime in Dingler and a near-big-league-ready group (Josue Briceño at first base, former first-rounder Bryce Rainer in the middle infield and Max Anderson at second or third) and it becomes easier to understand the appeal of the Dodgers’ package. Multiple executives involved in the discussions acknowledged that even if they believed theirs was superior, a reasonable person could understand why Detroit preferred Los Angeles’. The players aren’t just good. They fit Detroit’s needs.
Moving Skubal early allowed the Tigers to focus on dealing his rotation mate Casey Mize, who went to San Diego in a deal for left-hander Kash Mayfield in the final minutes Monday. A former first-rounder, Mayfield joins Ben Jacobs and Andrew Sears, two up-arrow lefty pitching prospects in the Tigers’ organization. The Tigers did not trade all their impending free agents, content to allow Gleyber Torres, Jack Flaherty and Kenley Jansen to continue competing for a wild-card slot in an American League that features a playoff team with a record below .500.
The Brewers, spurned, pivoted to right-hander Dustin May to fill their rotation void, acquiring him and left-handed reliever JoJo Romero from the St. Louis Cardinals for a pair of breakout prospects: outfielders Alexander Frias and Josiah Ragsdale. While Milwaukee toyed with the idea of paying an obscene price to get the best closer in the world, Mason Miller, from San Diego, it wound up a very Brewers-like deadline. Milwaukee has continued winning since, overtaking Los Angeles for the top seed in the NL. The litmus test, though, will be October, when the Brewers could be in position to avenge last year’s embarrassing NLCS sweep by the Dodgers — and will need to get through Skubal to do so.
This, as much as anything, is the consequence of the game’s payroll gap: It forces teams that do almost everything right, such as the Brewers and Rays, to spend their existence considering whether really, really trying to win is worth it. The answer, almost always, is no. And regardless of whether that’s right or wrong, it’s the existence the Brewers will carry into October, when they’ll march out Misiorowski, May and Kyle Harrison and hope it’s enough to topple a juggernaut that once again owned the trade deadline.
