"Their words and actions suggest they are still hyperfocused on drafting and development. They want to avoid bad contracts that could come back to bite them."
"Their words and actions suggest they are still hyperfocused on drafting and development. They want to avoid bad contracts that could come back to bite them."
6 comments
If the tigers already had all of the pieces in place, and just needed to retain skubal that would be one thing. But the team has an awful lot of soft spots.
Many of the nights skubal pitched we were not able to hit enough to secure a win despite a stellar pitching performance .
I can understand this. There’s two things that make me a skeptical of Skubal’s contract and that is that he doesn’t go deep into games, and the length of the contract. However, in general, Skubal has been durable and it feels like we’ve seen in this generation Great pitchers have pitched well, into their late 30’s and 40’s. Verlander was still really good this year at 42, Scherzer has been effective, and that’s the only 2 I can name…. Maybe that falls apart as Kershaw also has in his 30’s.
Fuck you Scott
I love Skubal and want him to stay.
But the Mariners, Blue Jays and others have shown, if you have a well rounded pitching staff and a solid hitting line up you can a lot more than just anchoring on an ace.
Or you can be the Dodgers and have aces and a well rounded team. But we have noticeable holes right now. And it’s going to be hard to pay for an ace and fill those holes at the same time.
Signing a 29 year old to a massive contract who’s already 9 years out from his first TJ makes zero sense.
He never goes over 100 pitches no matter what. Look, I get the sentiment for want to keep Skubal, but he only pitches every 5th day for about 6 innings. There are 1458 innings in a season, he participated in 195 of them (13 percent). The insane contract he will demand isn’t it worth it to me.
And I’ll caveat that a bit, if the tigers had an owner who is willing to spend, than by all means, it’s not my money. But the tigers clearly don’t have that. They have a tightwad. If they laid Skubal and it goes bad they won’t recover. If they don’t pay skubal it leaves flexibility even knowing that they won’t hand out contracts that would have equaled what skubal will get.
Conclusion: trade him this offseason.