{"id":613132,"date":"2026-03-08T10:00:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T10:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/613132\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T10:00:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T10:00:16","slug":"tigers-didnt-make-long-term-offer-to-tarik-skubal-during-offseason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/613132\/","title":{"rendered":"Tigers Didn’t Make Long-Term Offer To Tarik Skubal During Offseason"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tarik Skubal<\/a> is scheduled to reach free agency next winter, and it would appear that any chances of an extension between the star southpaw and the Tigers are going from slim to none.\u00a0 As Skubal told USA Today\u2019s Bob Nightengale<\/a>, the Tigers didn\u2019t discuss a long-term contract with the left-hander this winter.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no offer\u201d from the team right now, Skubal said, and \u201cthere won\u2019t be an offer until the end of the season\u2026.My focus is on playing baseball and winning this year.\u00a0 I\u2019ll deal with the contract stuff at the end of the year, and then we\u2019ll kind of see.\u00a0 And that\u2019s fine.\u00a0 It\u2019s their decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

There also weren\u2019t any talks about even a one-year deal covering Skubal\u2019s 2026 salary once Skubal filed for a $32MM figure in his final year of salary arbitration.\u00a0 This lack of talks was expected, since the Tigers adhere to the \u201cfile and trial\u201d tactic adopted by most every big league team \u2014 if an agreement isn\u2019t reached prior to the filing deadline, teams often cease all negotiations with the player unless the topic is a multi-year contract (or the work-around of a one-year deal with a mutual option attached for the following season).<\/p>\n

Finding middle ground between the Tigers and Skubal in this particular situation may have been unlikely anyway, given how Skubal\u2019s $32MM salary was meant to establish a new precedent for star pitchers (and, arguably all players) in their final year of arbitration eligibility.\u00a0 Detroit submitted a figure of $19MM, and the arbitration panel ruled in Skubal\u2019s favor<\/a>, in a very significant win for Skubal, agent Scott Boras, and the MLB players\u2019 union.<\/p>\n

As to the larger question of a long-term extension, the lack of fresh talks between the two sides is also perhaps not a surprise.\u00a0 Boras clients rarely opt for extensions over eventually testing free agency, and an even smaller number of Boras clients sign extensions when they\u2019re this close to the open market.\u00a0 Assuming Skubal stays healthy and delivers another season akin to his 2024-25 performance, he is expected to command another precedent-setting free agent contract that would make him the highest-paid pitcher in baseball history.<\/p>\n

Given the circumstances, the Tigers certainly wouldn\u2019t be getting any kind of hometown discount in extension talks, and if anything would\u2019ve had to pay a premium to convince Skubal to forego free agency.\u00a0 Faced with this reality, the Tigers may have considered further negotiations about a long-term deal to be somewhat pointless, if the club simply isn\u2019t prepared to pay Skubal a price tag that seems likely to land well north of $350MM.<\/p>\n

The Tigers did make Skubal an extension offer last winter, and Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free Press<\/a> reported in October that this offer was a four-year deal worth less than $100MM that would\u2019ve covered the 2025-28 seasons (Skubal\u2019s final two arbitration-eligible years and his first two free agent years).\u00a0 For context, Skubal went close to 11 months between MLB starts due to a flexor tendon surgery that sidelined him for parts of the 2022 and 2023 seasons, so it could be that the Tigers were thinking Skubal might jump at some financial security in the wake of a serious injury.\u00a0 However, given that Skubal looked superb after his return in 2023 and then won the AL Cy Young Award in 2024, Detroit\u2019s offer seemed bafflingly low in both dollars and length.<\/p>\n

All signs seem to be pointing to 2026 being Skubal\u2019s final season in Motown, though that doesn\u2019t necessarily mean there are any hard feelings between the player and the team.\u00a0 It could that the two sides recognize the reality of the situation, and (as Skubal alluded) plan to spend the year aiming towards their shared goal of a World Series championship.\u00a0 There was some speculation that the Tigers were considering dealing Skubal this offseason, yet that scenario never seemed too likely both due to both Detroit\u2019s big asking price, and the plain fact that a World Series push is easier when arguably baseball\u2019s best pitcher is on your roster.<\/p>\n

The Framber Valdez<\/a> signing<\/a> indicates that the Tigers are preparing for a post-Skubal rotation, though Valdez\u2019s $115MM free agent deal is only three years long, and contains an opt-out after 2027.\u00a0 Skubal and Valdez headline what looks like a very solid rotation that also consists of Jack Flaherty<\/a>, Casey Mize<\/a>, and Tigers legend Justin Verlander<\/a> returning to the Motor City to complete the unfinished business of winning a ring in a Tigers uniform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tarik Skubal is scheduled to reach free agency next winter, and it would appear that any chances of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,4,382],"class_list":{"0":"post-613132","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-tarik-skubal"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116192976987252673","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613132","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=613132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}