WEST SACRAMENTO, CA – It’s a crapshoot, this trading-for-prospects business. A half-court heave as the buzzer sounds.
The Detroit Tigers sent Tarik Skubal to the Los Angeles Dodgers for an outfield prospect and a couple of pitchers with potential Saturday, Aug. 1, and set the MLB world ablaze.
The Dodgers added the two-time American League Cy Young Award winner to a two-time World Series-winning roster? Yeah, they did, and their spendy ways are easy to root against and easier to rail against for those who like anything that resembles … competitive balance?
A chance for the Pittsburgh Pirates?
That’s a subject for another day, though, because we’re here to talk about prospects, and how so many of them don’t pan out. Almost all top-100 prospects get a look at the majors, but only a small percentage get multi-year contracts or make an All-Star game.
So, yeah, potential. That’s what the Tigers just got for Skubal. The gamble in such deals gets lost at this time of year, in the days leading to Monday’s MLB trade deadline, when so many are so certain the future will play out their way.
Maybe it will for them. And maybe it will for the Tigers, and outfielder Zyhir Hope and right-handers River Ryan and Brady Smith will find their way to the big leagues and help fuel the next baseball renaissance in Detroit.
But really, we don’t know. Scott Harris, the Tigers’ president of baseball operations for nearly four years now, doesn’t know.
He just knew he had to take the chance. Losing Skubal at the end of the season for a draft pick – first-rounder or fourth-rounder – was a much harder sell. Then again, watching the recent success of a couple of his inaugural draft picks makes you wonder if he wouldn’t have been better off keeping Skubal for one last run and taking that extra draft swing next July instead.
However this unfolds the next few seasons, whether the Dodgers won the trade or the Tigers won the trade, one thing we can be sure about is that before the season began, Harris was hoping he wouldn’t have to trade Skubal at all.
He had other plans. Postseason plans. Hopes. Dreams. A Game 5 – or Game 7 – where the Tigers got the hit or made the pitch that won the game.
It’s why he spent money this offseason on Framber Valdez and Kenley Jansen and Justin Verlander and Kyle Finnegan and Gleyber Torres. Skubal is gone now because not enough of those signings worked out. He is gone because Harris couldn’t assemble a reliable bullpen – the Tigers have blown more save opportunities than any other team in baseball.
He is gone because of tough injury luck and because, when it looked like the team was finally catching momentum, it hemorrhaged runs one too many times – including Skubal’s last start in a Tiger uniform, when the Tigers blew a 7-0 lead with a mere seven outs to go.
No single moment, last week or last month, led to Saturday’s trade. The avalanche of moments did. And that’s a shame, because the most dominant athlete in the city, as homegrown as they come, is leaving for a place that’ll never love him like Detroit did.
It just won’t be the same
Oh, that’s what we’ll tell ourselves, some of us anyway, and part of that is true: Los Angeles didn’t love LeBron James the way Cleveland did, or even the way Los Angeles loved Kobe Bryant, and Skubal knows that.
Which is one reason why he needed to get some hugs before he walked out of the Tigers clubhouse one last time, and why he got choked up Saturday night, after the Tigers’ 8-6 win over the Athletics, when he was asked about what it meant to be a Tiger and play with this group of players and what it felt like not getting to finish the season with them.
“You know, it’s tough, I love all those guys in there,” he said, “they’re some of my best friends and, um … that’ll be tough.”
He paused. Rubbed his temples.
“Sorry,” he said.
This shouldn’t be surprising. Skubal can both want to see what the open market will pay him this offseason, when he’s a free agent, and break down at the thought of leaving the team that drafted him in the ninth round in 2019, raised him, believed in him.
Nor should it be surprising that the Tigers who remain will want to prove they can win without him. Onward, as they say, and in no sport is that said more than baseball, where even historically great teams must cope with losing at least a third of their games.
Besides, Saturday’s win leaves the Tigers 2½ games out of the final AL wild-card spot. Now they’ve got more reason to make up the difference. Mostly, that reason is human nature. As in: Watch this!
Oh, they didn’t say that directly Saturday night – the clubhouse was too still and quiet for that despite a second straight win over the Athletics, and understandably so. Winning clubhouses are usually noisy, joyous affairs, but not right after the team that fills the clubhouse learned it was losing its competitive heart and soul.
“A good incentive to win”
“Sucks,” said catcher Dillon Dingler, who had the best seat in the house to Skubal’s pitching brilliance the past couple years. “But I feel like that’s a good incentive to win, you know?”
Dingler is pensive and thoughtful, and his ascension – he’s having a career year, complete with an All-Star appearance – coincided, in part, with Skubal’s Cy Young rise in the last two seasons. Baseball can be symbiotic like that.
Not just from pitcher to catcher, but from player to player, and as much as the Tigers will have to replace that wicked fastball-changeup combo, they’ll also have to replace his presence on the mound, in the dugout, in the clubhouse, the way he stalked, and saluted opposing fans, and howled after strikeouts in the tensest of moments.
In that way, he’d become a Detroiter, one of the boys, and no matter how much he won or how much he was lauded, he stayed real and true and authentic and always available, no matter how he’d pitched.
“You hear about some great pitchers that were maybe a little bit harsh,” Dingler said, “and Skoob was the exact opposite. Kept it light. Kept it fun. Was great to hang out with.”
Now he’s the Dodgers’ hang. No prospect is going to fill that void anytime soon. But there are candidates in the clubhouse already who might – ones who will bristle at whoever suggests this is a diminished roster.
“We have a lot of talent in that room,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said, “and we’ve been putting together some pretty good baseball for a long time and, of course … people will question because the team’s not intact anymore when somebody like Tarik is traded. But the fact is, we have a game [Sunday]. The game moves on fast.”
Indeed, it does.
Skubal’s a Dodger. Max Clark is a Tiger. Something ends. Something else begins.
Contact Shawn Windsor: swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Scott Harris’ gamble, Tarik Skubal’s tears leave Tigers with a chip on their shoulder
Reporting by Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
