who has this unlocked piece<\/a> on the whole story, David Price received $19.75 million in 2015, which remains the highest salary ever awarded to a pitcher. The Tigers agreed to that amount prior to going to arbitration.<\/p>\nIn the hearing, teams will argue against the mid-range of the two offers. The arbitrator will then pick one number or the other.<\/p>\n
Most arbitration estimates had Skubal pegged for $22-23 million in 2026.<\/p>\n
For those wondering if the lack of an agreement might mean a long-term extension is still on the table, it\u2019s not impossible but the lack of an arbitration agreement on its own doesn\u2019t mean anything at all. Assuming Skubal is going to free agency, the Tigers have no incentive, other than avoiding looking pretty bad in this initially, not to play hardball over the arb figure, and they\u2019ve already taken that tack with players throughout Scott Harris\u2019 time running the team. Famously they haggled with Mize over a difference of $25,000 heading into the 2024 season before conceding in exchange for locking in his $3.1 million figure for 2025 in advance.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s worth remembering that the two arb figures are about setting the midpoint to argue over in a hearing. It\u2019s worth noting that a player has never been awarded more than $20 million in arbitration, so the Tigers probably do stand a solid chance of winning. Behind the scenes there\u2019s a game of chicken going on, and perhaps that leads to a settlement before it gets that far. One might simply suspect that Boras and Skubal, an active MLBPA member, want to try and push the bounds in arbitration. Many owners, incluing the Tigers no doubt, want strict limiations on arbitration, and the CBA negotiations next year color all these decisions.<\/p>\n
It would be very odd to see the Tigers go big on an extension offer now after not making any serious bids for a long-term deal after the 2023 and 2024 campaigns in the first place. Ultimately, for the situation to change would likely require Skubal himself deciding he wants to stay and giving the Tigers a discount over the $350 million or more he\u2019ll likely command next year, and the Ilitch family recognizing that it\u2019s time to get involved and structure a deal that fits into their plans over the next decade. None of those things seem at all likely to happen. For now, the Tigers playing Skubal in 2026 and letting him walk for a compensation pick in the 2027 draft still seems the most likely outcome.<\/p>\n
What should also be noted looking at the arb salaries is that the remaining players on the roster are bound to get a lot more expensive beyond 2026. You can expect all the numbers listed by Tigers PR to roughly double for players returning in 2027. Of course, that\u2019s a pretty short list of players involved as well, so it shouldn\u2019t be too impactful on the payroll right away.<\/p>\n
The Tigers do have roughly $83 million set to come off the books after the 2026 season in Skubal, assuming his $22.5M in arbitration estimates, Mize, Jack Flaherty, Gleyber Torres, Jake Rogers, and Kenley Jansen. Javier B\u00e1ez and his $24 million per year will be off the books following the 2027 season. Obviously they\u2019ll have to replace all that talent to keep themselves in position to reach the playoffs and try to make a run.<\/p>\n
Currently, the Tigers payroll is estimated at $164 million by FanGraphs Roster Resource, which is right about league average based on 2025 payrolls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thursday\u2019s 8 p.m. ET deadline to reach contracts with arbitration eligible players for the 2026 passed with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2386],"tags":[5,147,53,34954,2583,4,55755,594],"class_list":{"0":"post-516180","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-tigers","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-detroit","10":"tag-detroit-tigers","11":"tag-detroit-tigers-roster","12":"tag-detroittigers","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-payroll-contracts","15":"tag-tigers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115880031904214395","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516180","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=516180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}