{"id":775175,"date":"2026-08-10T17:24:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T17:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/775175\/"},"modified":"2026-08-10T17:24:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T17:24:19","slug":"freddie-freeman-defends-tarik-skubal-after-dodgers-stars-comments-on-tigers-mlb-free-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/775175\/","title":{"rendered":"Freddie Freeman Defends Tarik Skubal After Dodgers Star’s Comments on Tigers, MLB Free Agency"},"content":{"rendered":"

Star first baseman Freddie Freeman understood Tarik Skubal’s comments about hoping that the Detroit Tigers would make an effort<\/a> to re-sign him in the offseason after trading him to the Los Angeles Dodgers, even if they weren’t received well in his new city.<\/p>\n

“You’re not just gonna flip a switch and be, like, ‘Oh, I’m great,'” Freeman told reporters<\/a>. “… You have all these friends, all these people you came up with in the minor leagues that are now with you as teammates. You had 15-hour bus rides together. You’re doing all these things together. The organization invested in you. You invested in them. You can do everything you can to win a World Series, and it doesn’t happen, and then you get traded.\u00a0So, you’re going to have emotions.”<\/p>\n

Freeman also didn’t understand any negativity being pointed Skubal’s way, especially from Detroit.<\/p>\n

“He got traded,” he said. “There’s nothing he could have done, unless they gave him a billion dollars and he didn’t say yes to that.”<\/p>\n

While Skubal took a loss in his first game pitching for the Dodgers at Wrigley Field against the Chicago Cubs, it wasn’t really on him\u2014he allowed just two runs on four hits and two walks across six innings, striking out six. But the bullpen and lineup struggled in a 5-1 loss. <\/p>\n

Skubal will make his home debut on Monday night against the Kansas City Royals.<\/p>\n

“I’m excited to get in front of our own fans and get to know them and build relationships with them,” he told reporters. “Hopefully, they come to enjoy who I am and what I bring to the table.”<\/p>\n

He also said making the difficult adjustment from the Tigers\u2014where he spent parts of seven seasons\u2014to the Dodgers wouldn’t affect his performance on the mound.<\/p>\n

“At the end of the day, I gotta do my job here,” Skubal told reporters. “Go play baseball and go out there and compete. Shift the mentality to give everything that I got to this team and the city of Los Angeles. That’s kind of where I have to shift to.”<\/p>\n

One thing the Dodgers can offer that the Tigers didn’t, at least this season, is a legitimate chance for the two-time Cy Young winner to win a World Series. Another thing they might offer, given their deep pockets, is the sort of lucrative contract over the winter that the Tigers aren’t willing to match. Time will tell. <\/p>\n

For now, Freeman expects Dodgers’ fans to make Skubal feel right at home.<\/p>\n

“Dodger Stadium is a special, special place, especially [with] those fans,” Freeman said. “They welcome the new guys in with open arms. They know how special he is, and what he means to the team and helping win another championship. I’m sure it’s going to be quite loud on a Monday night in August.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Star first baseman Freddie Freeman understood Tarik Skubal’s comments about hoping that the Detroit Tigers would make an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":775176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2386],"tags":[5,147,53,2583,4,594],"class_list":["post-775175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-detroit-tigers","tag-baseball","tag-detroit","tag-detroit-tigers","tag-detroittigers","tag-mlb","tag-tigers"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117072380753236306","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775175","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=775175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/775176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=775175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=775175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=775175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}