Well, friends, we did it! We survived the holiday season and we have entered a brand new year. We can cross our fingers that the Tigers have made a resolution to build a team that can get back to the postseason, but we shouldn\u2019t hold our breath until we see some actual movement from the team.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, there is no rest for the wicked, and the wicked in this case is all those trade rumors about Tarik Skubal. Nope, those haven\u2019t slowed down at all over the holidays, so we\u2019ll get into them below. Plus we look at some updates for managerial moves in the AL Central, and some general tidbits of MLB news. It\u2019s still a slow news period, but things should start to pick up pace this week.<\/p>\n
Note: there is a minor spoiler for the Stranger Things finale in the MLB News section, so if you are hoping to avoid spoilers, stop scrolling when you see that header. <\/p>\n
Detroit\u2019s run of success the last couple years has come largely without distractions, but Tarik Skubal\u2019s contract situation could become one if they\u2019re not careful. First and foremost, the Tigers have to decide whether to keep Skubal or trade him this offseason. If they hold onto him, then comes the question of whether a contract extension is feasible before free agency, and how long they can negotiate before putting the matter aside and focusing on the season. The 2014 Tigers did well to win amidst Max Scherzer\u2019s contract year and a Spring Training extension offer controversy, but this is a much younger club.<\/p>\n
For several reasons — from the rarity of a three-peat to the potential for a new economic landscape starting in 2027 — the Dodgers will surely push all their chips to the middle of the table in their quest for another title.<\/p>\n
They can even afford to trade for Skubal as a rental if the move leads them to a third straight championship, whereas just about any other team would need to immediately sign him to a long-term deal in order to justify giving up the prospects it will undoubtedly take to land a back-to-back Cy Young Award winner. If the Tigers fall out of the race, L.A. simply makes too much sense as a landing spot for Skubal — that is assuming he\u2019s not traded in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Well, friends, we did it! We survived the holiday season and we have entered a brand new year.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2387],"tags":[5,3536,936,2123,55,2596,2595,4,3537,252],"class_list":{"0":"post-506305","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-kansas-city-royals","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-detroit-tigers-news","10":"tag-kansas","11":"tag-kansas-city","12":"tag-kansas-city-royals","13":"tag-kansascity","14":"tag-kansascityroyals","15":"tag-mlb","16":"tag-mlb-news","17":"tag-royals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115842967725508534","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}