Well it\u2019s certainly been an eventful few days in Tigertown. After a fairly shocking signing of top free agent starter Framber Valdez to a three-year, $115 million deal on Wednesday, Tarik Skubal won his arbitration battle and set a new standard for elite third year arbitration eligible players by securing a $32 million contract for 2026.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not going to look the gift horse in the mouth here. We could wish the Tigers made a bigger move last offseason. You could wish for another bat. Still, the Tigers made a huge move to improve their rotation for 2026, turning it into arguably the best in baseball, and improved the bullpen by pushing presumed starting options into the pen and adding a starter that tends to eat more innings per start than most. There\u2019s a lot to like.<\/p>\n
The Tigers are now rocking a well above average $215 million estimated payroll heading into spring camp, blowing the rest of the AL Central out of the water in that regard. As a result, a lot of questions we\u2019ve all had about the Ilitch family\u2019s real interest in trying to win something, and about Scott Harris\u2019 ability to pull off a big deal with some creativity have been answered. By going heavy in average annual value on the deal, complete with a signing bonus, some deferred money, and an opt-out for Valdez after year two, Harris pulled off not just a good deal from a competitive standpoint, but an opportunistic and fairly innovative one by franchise standards.<\/p>\n
Of course, he got worked in the arbitration hearing, but that wasn\u2019t much of a surprise and I don\u2019t think anyone is begrudging Skubal getting paid what he\u2019s worth.<\/p>\n
My question is whether all this has you feeling differently about the club\u2019s willingness and ability to operate as a contending team for the long haul? Or do you just feel more optimistic about 2026?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Well it\u2019s certainly been an eventful few days in Tigertown. After a fairly shocking signing of top free…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":558057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2386],"tags":[5,147,53,72746,2583,4,594],"class_list":{"0":"post-558056","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-discussion","12":"tag-detroittigers","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-tigers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116024547958164034","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558056","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=558056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}