Tarik Skubal’s availability ahead of Major League Baseball’s Aug. 3 trade deadline has shifted from near-certainty to active debate. The Detroit Tigers have won 10 of their first 14 games in July and are 25-15 since the start of June, and while they remain six games below .500 they sit 4½ games back of a wild-card spot in a crowded American League, the report noted. A growing sentiment among rival executives is that the Tigers could hold Skubal past the deadline as they try to stay in the race — provided they keep playing at a high level. If Detroit slips, the reigning, back-to-back AL Cy Young Award winner could become a top midseason commodity.
The Los Angeles Dodgers, meanwhile, present a complicated fit. They enter the summer with the sport’s second-best record, the highest run differential and the largest division lead, suggesting they do not strictly need another frontline starter. At the same time, the franchise has a history of making major midseason moves, leaving the door open for a high-profile addition.
The strongest argument against trading for Skubal centers on the Dodgers’ projected playoff rotation. Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Shohei Ohtani, Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow are regarded as the club’s four playoff starters; those four combined to go 10-4 with a 2.55 ERA while covering 113 of Los Angeles’ 165 innings in last year’s playoffs, and all worked in Game 7 of the World Series. Health questions complicate that picture: Snell has spent nearly the season on the injured list but made his first rehab start recently and is expected back early next month, Glasnow has been sidelined by lower back spasms but is throwing off a mound and is expected to return before the end of August, and Ohtani was shut down from pitching indefinitely though the expectation remains he will return. The report added that none of those returns is guaranteed.
Depth also factors into the calculus. Justin Wrobleski posted a 2.69 ERA in his first 100 1/3 innings and recorded five strikeouts in the All-Star Game, the team recently saw Roki Sasaki touch 102 mph at Yankee Stadium, and the Dodgers’ bullpen is expected to be in better shape than it was heading into last October. At the same time, the club has previously completed large deadline deals, including acquisitions of Yu Darvish (2017), Manny Machado (2018) and Max Scherzer and Trea Turner (2021).
Given Detroit’s recent surge and Los Angeles’ mix of surplus and uncertainty, the situation could swing either way, the report concluded. Rival executives now expect the Tigers to try to hang onto Skubal as they chase a postseason berth, but any downturn could quickly change the market and refocus attention on the Dodgers.
