The Los Angeles Dodgers have won back-to-back World Series titles and they’re not exactly acting like a team that’s satisfied. If anything, they seem hellbent on making sure nobody catches them anytime soon. And the latest buzz around the trade deadline has them connected to the one arm that could turn an already stacked rotation into something almost unfair.
Detroit Tigers ace Tarik Skubal is the best pitcher available on the market. The 29-year-old lefty won the American League Cy Young last season and he’s been dealing again this year with a 3.06 ERA, 84 strikeouts and a 5-4 record across 12 starts. Plenty of teams could use him, but ESPN’s Jeff Passan believes the Dodgers might be his most logical landing spot.
“There are two realities at play here: The Dodgers have the sort of farm system Detroit would love to raid, and adding Skubal to a rotation that includes Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Blake Snell would make them damn near unassailable,” Passan wrote.
Other clubs like the Orioles or Padres probably need Skubal more than Los Angeles does. But that’s not really the point. The Dodgers don’t operate like a team that worries about what other franchises need. They’ve built themselves into a juggernaut through a mix of smart trades and deep pockets. Passan noted that the Dodgers have positioned themselves to essentially bully the league if they want to.
Why Skubal Makes Sense Beyond Just Adding an Ace
There’s another layer here that’s worth talking about. If the Dodgers don’t get Skubal, someone else will. And that someone could end up facing Los Angeles in October. Passan pointed out that the opportunity to not only add Skubal to their rotation but also prevent having to face him in a crucial postseason game is a real factor in their thinking.
“So while they could nibble around the margins like they did at the last deadline, the opportunity to not only add Skubal to their rotation but prevent the chance of having to face him in a crucial game is tantalizing,” Passan wrote.
The price won’t be cheap. Detroit is going to demand a haul. That probably means a big-league-ready arm and a top outfield prospect at minimum. Passan acknowledged that the Dodgers don’t typically love deals with negative expected value in their internal models. But when your franchise is pulling in over a billion dollars in annual revenue, the cost of another championship banner starts to feel like a rounding error.
It’s still unclear whether Los Angeles will actually get aggressive enough to pull this off. But the fact that they’re even in the conversation for a player of Skubal’s caliber this early tells you everything about how they view their window. They don’t just want to win. They want to make sure nobody else has a chance.
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