Tarik Skubal is now officially the former Detroit Tigers ace, shipped to the Los Angeles Dodgers late Saturday night for a package of three prospects before he’s poised to enter free agency in the offseason.
It’s a no-brainer addition for the Dodgers, whose stacked rotation only gets deeper and more menacing with the addition of Skubal as they take aim at a third straight World Series championship.
Not surprisingly, in assessing the trade, analysts gave the Dodgers A’s (and, in some cases, A-pluses) across the board. Reviews of the the Tigers’ return — Zyhir Hope, a Double-A outfielder generally considered one of the top 50 prospects in the game; and right-handers River Ryan (another highly rated prospect) and Brady Smith — were more mixed.
Taking a look at samplings from analysts that have come out in the last 12 hours, grades range anywhere from an A to a D.
“Detroit’s return in this deal feels like a bad dream,” Bradford Doolittle, an MLB writer and analyst for ESPN, writes, in giving the Tigers a D. “OK, let’s calm down. Skubal, as good as he is, was on an expiring deal. There is only so much value that can be extracted from a trade partner for a player who might be a free agent in four months. The fair-value matches you can conjure in these scenarios won’t make the hearts of Detroit fans go pitter-patter, though you can always hope that the real-world outcome is that with multiple teams vying for a true difference-maker, those fair-value assessments might go out the window.
“Zyhir Hope is a top 30-or-so prospect across baseball. That’s a valuable prospect. But on most prospect lists, he’s the fourth-best outfield prospect in the Dodgers’ system. So for the best pitcher in baseball, the Tigers could not command the Dodgers’ best prospect out of their amazing surplus of promising outfielders?”
Doolittle goes up to describe Ryan as having “stud potential,” though he’s dealt with injuries, including Tommy John surgery, and a hamstring issue in which he’s coming back from now.
Doolittle wonders aloud if the Tigers could have waited a little longer — the MLB trade deadline is 6 p.m. Monday — a sentiment seemingly echoed by Rowan Kavner of FOX Sports, who gave the Tigers a C-plus while seeming surprised that “the Dodgers got it done … with two days left to spare before the deadline.”
“To be clear, it’s not that this is a bad return,” Kavner writes. “Hope, who has 23 homers and 18 steals at Double-A, is a tremendously gifted prospect, arguably one of the top 25 in the sport. Ryan is one of the Dodgers’ top pitching prospects, though he’s also about to turn 28, missed last season recovering back from Tommy John surgery, and has barely pitched this year due to lingering hamstring issues. Smith has racked up strikeouts this year between Low-A and High-A. All of them bring upside.
“But, even for a rental, I expected more. This is Tarik Skubal we’re talking about. Brewers? Rays? Braves? Where you at?”
It wasn’t all bad reviews for the Tigers, however. The Athletic’s graders generally gave the Tigers solid marks, with Stephen J. Nesbitt, a senior MLB writer and admitted Tigers fan, giving the Tigers an A.
“The Tigers are, at least in theory, still in the hunt this season,” Nesbitt writes. “That’s still the case. Even without Skubal. Even without Casey Mize, assuming he’s traded. This move was made with next year (and the year after that, and the year after that …) in mind. Two months of Skubal for all of this? Yet it leaves the Tigers in a position to have at least a puncher’s chance at a wild-card spot. That seems to be the needle their front office was trying to thread in a Skubal deal.”
Other Tigers grades:
Zack Meisel, Cleveland Guardians senior writer, The Athletic: B
Tim Britton, New York Mets staff writer, The Athletic: B-minus
Dan Treacy, The Sporting News: C-plus
Ryan Phillips, Sports Illustrated: C
Mike Axisa, MLB writer at CBS Sports: C
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Analysts grade Tigers’ return in Tarik Skubal trade with Dodgers
Reporting by Daren Tomhave, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Daren Tomhave, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
