Since news emerged last week that the Detroit Tigers and their ace left-hander, Tarik Skubal, were $13 million apart in arbitration numbers, the whole thing has quickly blown up into a proxy for everything distasteful about the business of sports, and every frustration surrounding the Tigers, specifically. The arbitration battle gets into every aspect of the game, from what players and owners should earn from the fans\u2019 dollars, to the often fragile concept of loyalty between fans, franchises, and players.<\/p>\n
The punditry has been downright frothy over all the connected issues, and the arbitration dispute can be spun into support for all sorts of positions that have nothing to do with the simple matter of how much Skubal will get paid this year. Fundamentally this is just an argument over $13 million, a relatively paltry sum in the broader picture of the sport.<\/p>\n
On one issue, hopefully there is finally clarity for the Tigers\u2019 fanbase. There was just never any chance the Tigers were going to extend Skubal. The Ilitch family is not providing enough spending power to allow Harris to risk getting stuck with a $300-350 million contract over 10 years for a broken pitcher. As I emphasized all last offseason, if there was a time to offer Skubal an aggressive extension bid, the 2024-2025 offseason was that last chance, but almost certainly it was just never in the cards.<\/p>\n
As someone who has covered the Tigers for a decade, and is talking every day with other SB Nation folks who cover the other 29 teams, the lack of a real PR push from either side to gain control of the narrative here has been fairly telling all along. Everyone seems to have known the score for a long time.<\/p>\n
The Tigers made no serious offer, and at no point was there any committment from ownership or Harris to \u201cdo what it takes\u201d to keep Skubal for the long term. They also never made a face-saving type of move like publicly revealing a $200 million offer and trying to put Skubal and Boras behind the eight ball either. At that point, they could have argued that \u201chey, at least we tried.\u201d Likewise, there was never anything from the Skubal camp along the lines of, \u201cI want to be a Tiger for life, I recognize that this isn\u2019t a major market and want a contract that allows them to continue to add talent around me.\u201d<\/p>\n
In other words, signs of a potential agreement never appeared, and neither side even seemed that interested in playing the PR game too seriously either.<\/p>\n
We are of course talking about super agent Scott Boras, representing the preeminent pitcher in baseball, who is also a union representative elected to the players\u2019 executive subcommittee for the MLBPA. Odds are high that since Skubal developed into the best pitcher in baseball in the second half of the 2023 season, they\u2019ve intended to make him the next test case in free agency no matter what the Tigers did. From the players\u2019 side of the MLBPA vs. owners battle this makes all the sense in the world, and with the next CBA negotiation only a year away, there\u2019s more at stake here than just how many millions of dollars Skubal earns. The duo is trying to raise the bar in free agency both for themselves, and in the hope that it sets a higher standard of pay for all players in the end.<\/p>\n
At the center of all this is president of baseball operations, Scott Harris, and he\u2019s in a pretty tricky situation.<\/p>\n
Harris can\u2019t sign Tarik Skubal long-term, because he clearly doesn\u2019t have the financial push from ownership that a move like that would require. Giving out the largest free agent contract in history to a 30-year-old pitcher with two major arm surgeries behind him and a game that depends pretty heavily on fastball velocity, is just too dangerous without an ownership group willing to eat some of the cost should things go wrong.<\/p>\n
Of course, if Harris decides to trade Skubal, which is probably the smart move considering the low odds of winning a World Series for any team in any season, a lot of fans are going to revolt. It will be taken by many as a clear sign the that Tigers are punting on the 2026 season, going back into a rebuild mode, and will never win a championship anytime soon.<\/p>\n
Finally, if they play out the season with Skubal and don\u2019t at least reach the World Series, many will be quite frustrated that the Tigers squandered Skubal\u2019s long-term value in trade only to miss the playoffs or at least get no further than they did in 2024-2025. If they struggle badly out of the gate and end up trading him in July, that may feel even worse.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why the president of baseball operations makes the big bucks. The seat is always hot when you\u2019re a chief decision maker in major professional sports. However, reporting today from the Free Press isn\u2019t doing him any favors, either.<\/p>\n