Trading for Tarik Skubal is precisely what the rest of Major League Baseball does not want to see the Los Angeles Dodgers do.
Already in possession of the best roster in the sport, the Dodgers don’t need to acquire Skubal, the Detroit Tigers’ back-to-back Cy Young Award winner, to rank as the favorites to win a third-straight World Series title. But the only questions that matter to the Dodgers are whether it increases their odds of winning (duh) and whether it’s actually achievable.
The answer to the latter question likely depends on whether the Tigers are willing to give up Skubal at all, because Los Angeles somehow always manages to have a deep farm system. But it’s worth drawing up projected trade packages to gauge just how prudent it feels to make the move for only one guaranteed year of Skubal.
On Thursday, Jim Bowden of The Athletic proposed a four-player package that he believed would stand a chance of landing Skubal in Detroit: right-handed pitcher Emmet Sheehan, left-handed pitchers Justin Wrobleski and Jackson Ferris, and outfielder Zyhir Hope.
“The Dodgers already have four aces in their rotation and an exciting development project in Roki Sasaki,” Bowden wrote. “However, teams can never have enough starting pitching, so the Dodgers have no reason not to add another ace to the top of the rotation, especially when they can offer a competitive package and have the resources to keep him long-term, as well.
“Los Angeles could offer two major-league ready starting pitchers in Sheehan and Wrobleski, and a third pitcher in Ferris who’s getting closer to being major-league ready.”
If the Tigers really were going to deal Skubal, the idea of landing two pitchers that could immediately slot into Detroit’s rotation would likely be somewhat palatable to the fan base — though not enough to fully dull the pain of the blow. That might give the Dodgers an edge, because even beyond Sheehan and Wrobleski, there are other young arms like River Ryan that may be waiting their turns to join the LA rotation early next season.
And not that any of this guarantees that Skubal will ever wear a Dodgers cap, but the fact that Los Angeles likely doesn’t mind paying whatever the highest possible price to land him in free agency might be does make a trade there seem more feasible than some other possible destinations.
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