Costa and Jansen with Heather Show on 97.1 The Ticket<\/a> on Wednesday. Most of the discussion centered around next month\u2019s trade deadline, but host Jim Costa also asked Harris about Skubal.<\/p>\nHere\u2019s what he said:<\/p>\n
I\u2019m watching him pitch, too, and I love watching him pitch, and I\u2019m really proud that he\u2019s a Tiger right now. Sometimes it sounds a lot easier to just \u2018lock him up\u2019 and sign extensions and just get it done because you feel like it. It\u2019s a lot harder than that.<\/p>\n
We have taken a very intentional and targeted approach to retaining young players. I said it the first day I was a Tiger that we want to acquire, develop, and retain young talent. We\u2019ve already done it once with one of our young players in Colt Keith. I\u2019m really proud of that deal.<\/p>\n
The one thing that we\u2019re not going to do is we\u2019re not going to talk about negotiations before we\u2019ve reached a deal. It\u2019s not fair to the player, it\u2019s not fair to the organization, and it\u2019s not fair to the entire industry to kind of float out offers or counters or any of that stuff.<\/p>\n
These things are really hard to get done. We\u2019re working as hard as we can to keep what we think is a really good group around as long as we can, because these guys have done special things at this level, and we think they\u2019re still really young, they\u2019re still really talented, and they\u2019re going to keep getting better. So we\u2019re going to try to keep them around as long as we can.<\/p>\n
Detroit Tigers President Scott Harris on 97.1 The TicketBest pitcher in baseball<\/p>\n
Skubal was the best pitcher in MLB last season, winning the AL Cy Young Award and triple crown with 18 wins, a 2.39 ERA, and 228 strikeouts in 192 innings.<\/p>\n
Other than a lower ground ball rate, Skubal has been even more dominant in 2025, with a 2.16 ERA, a 0.82 WHIP, and 105 strikeouts in 83.1 innings. He leads the league with a ridiculous 2.2% walk rate while getting whiffs and weak contact at elite levels.<\/p>\n
Skubal\u2019s most-used pitch this season is his changeup which is getting whiffs on nearly half of the swings against it (49.3%). His four-seam fastball is up to 97.7 mph on average, and the sinker\/slider combo has helped to keep hitters guessing.<\/p>\n
Skubal contract discussion<\/p>\n
There\u2019s not really a question that Skubal is the best pitcher in the world right now. But nobody knows what uniform he\u2019ll be wearing at the start of the 2027 season.<\/p>\n
Skubal has one year of team control remaining before he hits free agency, and as a client of agent Scott Boras, he\u2019s likely being advised to hit the open market after 2026.<\/p>\n
Tigers fans want to keep Skubal in the Old English D, but like Harris said, it\u2019s not that cut-and-dry. He\u2019s likely to receive the largest contract for a pitcher in MLB history, and that\u2019s not really how the Tigers have built their current roster.<\/p>\n
Detroit owns the best record in baseball at 44-25 — that\u2019s good for a seven-game lead in the AL Central. But other than Skubal (and perhaps Riley Greene), the team is made up of non-stars who fit very specific roles.<\/p>\n
It would be out of character for the current regime to commit $300 million or more to any player — let alone who only plays in about 20% of the team\u2019s games.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not to say the Tigers shouldn\u2019t sign Skubal. But it\u2019s not as obvious a move as people think. Ask the Diamondbacks how they\u2019re feeling about the Corbin Burnes deal. Or ask the Yankees about Gerrit Cole. Or ask the Phillies about Aaron Nola.<\/p>\n
Harris took the Tigers from last place to the playoffs in just two years and now has them in first place. Fans will have to trust him to make the right decision on Skubal — however it plays out.<\/p>\n
Detroit Sports+<\/p>\n
We spoke extensively about the Tigers on this week\u2019s episode of Detroit Sports+ — you can watch each segment below!<\/p>\n
Are the Tigers the favorites to make the World Series in the AL?<\/p>\n
How many All-Stars should the Tigers have?<\/p>\n
Who will win a title first: the Tigers or the Lions?<\/p>\n
Copyright 2025 by WDIV ClickOnDetroit – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DETROIT \u2013 Detroit Tigers President Scott Harris was asked this week about a possible contract extension for superstar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2386],"tags":[4650,5,147,53,2583,4,594],"class_list":{"0":"post-97942","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-tigers","8":"tag-2025-detroit-tigers","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-detroit","11":"tag-detroit-tigers","12":"tag-detroittigers","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-tigers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114669602958848425","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97942","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=97942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}