WEST SACRAMENTO, CA – It feels so long ago, Casey Mize was saying, talking about when he and Tarik Skubal were drafted back in 2018.
It also feels like it was yesterday. Getting older bends time like that, Mize would attest, slowing it and speeding it simultaneously.
One day you’re the No. 1 pick in the draft and the next day you’re 29 and you’re standing in a minor-league clubhouse while your major-league teammates prepare for a game in 100-degree heat against the Athletics, while you wonder if you’re next.
At least the A’s know where they are going when their stadium in Las Vegas is finished. Mize isn’t sure where he will be Tuesday.
He could still be a Tiger. He could also be anywhere else, though probably not back here in West Sacramento, where the Tigers have won the first two games of this series and lost Skubal, the face of their franchise.
Strange days. Wistful days. Even painful days. Also, hopeful days.
That last one is how Mize and the rest of his teammates ultimately feel about where they are right now, on the morning after the biggest trade in recent franchise history. There is another game to play. And then another. And another.
Baseball is relentless this way, mercifully so in times like this. As Spencer Torkelson noted Sunday, Aug. 2, at Sutter Health Park:
“It was definitely sad. [Skubal’s] one of my best friends, one of my favorite teammates of all time. … It just sucks to see him go. But, you know, [his trade] doesn’t change what we’re trying to accomplish as a team.”
As Torkelson and everyone else in the clubhouse know, including manager A.J. Hinch, the Tigers are as close to a postseason slot as they’ve been since the beginning of the season. They are 2½ games from the final American League wild-card spot.
Yes, they just lost their ace, and he was starting to look like the force they’d come to rely on his past few starts. Now he’s gone, and he took not just his fastball and his slider and his wonderfully intimidating mound demeanor to the Los Angeles Dodgers, but his mirth and competitive zest, a combo that helped fill up the clubhouse.
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They’ll have to replace that almost as much as anything else.
Like Mize said, “in the last couple years we don’t get anywhere without Tarik Skubal, and I hope our fanbase is appreciative of that, even if maybe it didn’t end the way that everyone wanted it to.”
That’s true for the fans, clearly. But also true for his teammates, who were somber and sober and relatively quiet Saturday night in the clubhouse, telling Skubal they loved him as they hugged him.
Tigers clubhouse reacts to Tarik Skubal trade
“It sucks,” said Riley Greene, a phrase that boomeranged stall to stall Sunday morning as the team gathered for the first time in a clubhouse without their best player. And yet there was more life, too. There had to be.
“It’s not going to affect what we’re doing,” he said. “It can’t.”
Players get traded every year. Maybe not two-time Cy Young winners, but they eventually get traded, too. Ask Justin Verlander, who remains in the background of this clubhouse, offering an ear and 20-plus years of MLB wisdom.
Verlander politely declined to talk about Skubal’s trade. But obviously he can relate.
So can Jack Flaherty, in a very specific way. Flaherty was also traded to the Dodgers midseason.
Hard to believe that was just two summers ago. Time bends and all that, eh? Well, here Flaherty is again, back in the clubhouse he left, rehabbing forearm inflammation, hoping to return from the 15-day IL as soon as he can – whether for the Tigers or elsewhere.
“I feel good,” he said.
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As for Skubal?
“You wish him the best, try to help out in any way you can … and then also understand, you know, the next day – today – we still have a job to do.”
And so, they prepared to get back on the field Sunday and go for the sweep. Then get on a plane. Head to Seattle. The the MLB trade deadline hits at 6 p.m. ET Monday. After that, they’ll take the field once more and try to win again Tuesday evening.
On it goes.
“The game moves on quickly,” said Hinch, who had become quite close with Skubal and spent time with him late Saturday. “We have a responsibility to be ready to play, and our guys will be ready to play. I think this [trade] is a little bit unique because while it didn’t shock anybody, it probably still surprises people.”
In how it feels when it happens. In how hard it is to process in the moment. In how quickly that gut-punch of losing a teammate and a fellow warrior must be shoved deep down and locked away.
The game waits for no one. And won’t for these Tigers. They believe they have places to go. The business of getting there starts now.
Contact Shawn Windsor: swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Tigers’ mood changes dramatically hours after Tarik Skubal trade
Reporting by Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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By Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
