{"id":975743,"date":"2026-08-02T13:22:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T13:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/975743\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T13:22:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T13:22:14","slug":"skubal-excited-to-be-a-dodger-as-la-reloads-for-another-world-series-run","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/975743\/","title":{"rendered":"Skubal ‘excited to be a Dodger’ as LA reloads for another World Series run"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the baseball community descended into madness over the Los Angeles Dodgers<\/a>\u2019 latest all-world addition, a stoic Tarik Skubal<\/a> expressed mixed emotions.<\/p>\n

It had become clear<\/a> in recent days that the Detroit Tigers, fringe playoff contenders who risked losing Skubal for nothing but a compensatory draft pick this winter, would part with the back-to-back American League Cy Young Award winner ahead of Monday\u2019s 6 p.m. trade deadline.<\/p>\n

But Saturday\u2019s late-night news that the Dodgers were acquiring the left-hander in an MLB-altering blockbuster still struck Skubal nonetheless.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m excited to be a Dodger,\u201d Skubal said. \u201cI\u2019m excited to get down there and meet all those guys and chase three championships in a row. That\u2019s hard to do, so I\u2019m excited to be a part of that. But yeah, it\u2019s a lot of different emotions.\u201d<\/p>\n

An impending free agent, the 29-year-old Skubal is 7-5 with a 2.79 ERA and 116 strikeouts in 96.2 innings. It\u2019s his third consecutive season with a sub-3.00 ERA and a strikeout rate of at least 10.8 per nine innings.<\/p>\n

Skubal now joins a juggernaut Dodgers rotation also headlined by Yoshinobu Yamamoto and, when at full strength, includes Shohei Ohtani, Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow. All five have been All-Stars, as has 26-year-old Justin Wrobleski (11-2, 2.88 ERA), who represented the National League this year.<\/p>\n

The cost to add Skubal for the next two-plus months was trading away Double-A outfielder Zyhir Hope and minor-league right-handers River Ryan and Brady Smith \u2014 the Dodgers\u2019 No. 5, No. 7 and No. 17 prospects, respectively, per MLB Pipeline<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hope (No. 25) and Ryan (No. 68) are both ranked within MLB Pipeline\u2019s top 100 prospects.<\/p>\n

It was a price the championship-or-bust Dodgers were more than willing to pay as they try to become the first team to win three consecutive World Series since the dynastic Yankees from 1998-2000.<\/p>\n

The deep-pocketed Dodgers \u2014 with an MLB-high $428.9 million competitive-tax payroll, according to Cot\u2019s Contracts<\/a> \u2014 remain at the center of baseball\u2019s high-stakes labor dispute. MLB owners argue that a salary cap would improve competitive balance, a stance the players union staunchly rejects.<\/p>\n

The Dodgers acquired Skubal by dipping into their well-regarded prospect pool, not by signing him to a big-money free-agent contract like they did to add Ohtani, Yamamoto, Snell and others.<\/p>\n

But teams like the Dodgers, with their robust financial resources, are typically more comfortable trading prospects for a premium rental than a small-market team such as the Milwaukee Brewers or Tampa Bay Rays \u2014 both considered contenders in the Skubal sweepstakes \u2014 would be.<\/p>\n

Negotiations between the mid-market Tigers and Skubal\u2019s camp \u2014 he is a Scott Boras client \u2014 for a contract extension never gained much momentum, as the left-hander is expected to command a historic deal in free agency this winter.<\/p>\n

Three years ago, the Los Angeles Angels were on-the-bubble contenders when they opted to keep Ohtani through the deadline. The worst-case scenario played out for the Angels, who missed the playoffs that year, then watched Ohtani leave for a heavily deferred 10-year, $700 million contract with the Dodgers in free agency that winter.<\/p>\n

After back-to-back playoff appearances, the Tigers hoped to contend again this season with Skubal atop their rotation.<\/p>\n

But the Tigers entered Sunday with a 53-58 record and were 5.5 games out of first place in the pedestrian AL Central. They were only 2.5 games out of an AL wild-card spot but would have to jump five teams in order to claim one.<\/p>\n

So Detroit moved on from Skubal with an eye toward the future \u2014 a fate that seemed inevitable Wednesday when Tigers fans showered the left-hander with a standing ovation as he left the Comerica Park mound for what proved to be his final start as a Tiger.<\/p>\n

\u201cGoing into the season, this isn\u2019t what I planned on doing, but circumstances change, situations change,\u201d Skubal said of the Dodgers trade. \u201cI\u2019m very appreciative of everything the Tigers have done for me, just drafting me in 2018, giving a kid a chance.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the baseball community descended into madness over the Los Angeles Dodgers\u2019 latest all-world addition, a stoic Tarik…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":975744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,2442,2961,224,5337,1266,34551,2971,39333],"class_list":["post-975743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-dodgers","tag-la","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-mlb","tag-tarik-skubal","tag-tigers","tag-trade-deadline"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117026130841259134","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=975743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/975744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=975743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=975743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=975743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}