If Shohei Ohtani doesn't return to the pitcher's mound for the Los Angeles Dodgers this season, they've got themselves a hell of a replacement. Late Saturday night, the back-to-back defending world champions made the biggest trade deadline move possible, acquiring back-to-back AL Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal from the Detroit Tigers in exchange for three prospects.
This trade helps a strong team grow even stronger, and their 10-game lead in the NL West already makes the Dodgers the presumptive winners of that division yet again. If their starting rotation was looking a little thin with the injuries to Ohtani, Blake Snell, and Tyler Glasnow, it doesn't anymore. The thrill of imagining Skubal and Yoshinobu Yamamoto starting the first two games of a playoff series is exactly the feeling that contending teams should want to spark in their fans when they bring on a new guy at the deadline.
While MLB continues its campaign to get people mad at the Dodgers for spending money and winning, a half-season of Skubal's services was clearly within the budget of the league's other franchises, too—even the ones that keep payrolls low. The Dodgers will spend $9.5 million on his contract before he enters free agency, and they haven't parted with any irreplaceable players. From this deal, the Tigers will add a pretty obscure single-A hurler; a 27-year-old pitcher in AAA named River Ryan that some folks seem to like; and, the best of the bunch according to MLB Pipeline, 21-year-old AA outfielder Zyhir Hope.
In addition to giving up their superstar pitcher, the Tigers also surrendered any pretense that they might like to seriously compete in the near-term. The Skubal trade signals the end of a mini-era of relevance achieved on the back of his unparalleled pitching. They just barely sneaked into the playoffs in both 2024 and 2025, making a little bit of noise each time. But this year, as Skubal was absent for a while due to an elbow injury, they held a record of just 22-38 at the end of May. It's gone better for them since, with Skubal pitching near if not quite at his usual form, and they're only 2.5 games out of the postseason. But the four non-playoff teams sitting between them and the final wild card apparently made too imposing a barricade for the franchise to attempt a charge. The Lions' preseason starts in 11 days.
