At this juncture of the baseball offseason, trade rumors are broadly wishful fantasies for Yankees fans. I know this because yesterday, Barry Petchesky dropped a tweet in Slack from a Yankees fan account that read, "Would you rather trade for Paul Skenes or Tarik Skubal?" According to a report that reads faintly like Yankees fanfiction, Skenes had told his Pirates teammates that he always wanted to be a Yankee. (He later denied this report after winning the National League Cy Young award.) Skubal has no such report regarding the siren call of New York City; he is, however, the American League Cy Young winner, has just one year left on his existing contract, and has failed to reach agreement on an extension with Detroit Tigers management. And thus, let the trade packages be proposed.
There are some truths here that may or may not mitigate ill will toward the Tigers front office: Skubal is newly 29 (happy birthday to Tarik Skubal!); by the time he starts his next contract, he will be 30. Despite his age and injury history, he has won back-to-back AL Cy Young awards, and goes about the sport the right way, i.e. by barely walking batters. He is also a client of Scott Boras, whose clients historically go to free agency rather than signing extensions, to give themselves maximum leverage in negotiations. Whatever the Tigers have offered Skubal for an extension, it wasn't enough to avert an inevitable-seeming free agency outcome.
And thus, as baseball clubs are wont to do, the Tigers are reportedly listening to trade offers on their best player. It's hard to imagine a scenario in which a trade makes sense, in the way few low-spending maneuvers ever make any real sense. As the Tigers and Guardians proved last year, the AL Central looks almost alarmingly winnable. Trading Skubal prior to the season start is tantamount to self-sabotage; planning on trading him before the deadline, at which time the Tigers could very well be winning the division, is equally silly. Of course it would also be silly to let him leave in free agency, which is why a club seeking to win a World Series will open its pockets as far as they'll go.
What remains unclear is whether the Tigers will behave like a club seeking to win a World Series. At least we can factor in Skubal actively declining to sign a Yankees hat into the Magic 8 ball calculations of where he'll wind up at the end of 2026. Barring a report from NJ Advance Media, all we know is that Tarik Skubal grew up an Oakland Athletics fan. West Sacramento, rejoice.
