Tarik Skubal is scheduled to pitch in a spring training game for the Detroit Tigers on March 16.
There’s only one problem: that’s the same day Team USA faces a potential semifinal game in the World Baseball Classic.
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That’s not necessarily how Team USA manager Mark DeRosa would have drawn it up. Most teams prefer to save their best pitchers for the elimination rounds.
According to Bob Nightengale of USA Today, the only condition where Skubal would have pitched in the WBC is if he was limited to one game during the Pool Play portion of the tournament.
Detroit Tigers pitcher Tarik Skubal high-fives teammates in the dugout after a pitching change during the seventh inning at Comerica Park in Detroit on Wednesday, May 14, 2025.
His plan for the semifinals and finals?
“I need to get back to (Tigers) camp and get back to my routine,” Skubal told Nightengale, “but I want to go to Miami and just be at those (WBC) games. … I might just be there and be a cheerleader.”
The back-to-back American League Cy Young Award winner at least might be in the ballpark with his teammates with the WBC championship on the line.
Skubal enters his final year before free agency and doesn’t want to risk an injury by overextending himself in March. That’s a unique, if understandable, predicament among players participating in the WBC.
But it’s a predicament nonetheless. The awkward situation would escalate if Skubal is in the building and has to decline if DeRosa asks him to pitch in the WBC championship game.
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