The Detroit Tigers are spiraling, and the clock toward the Aug. 3 trade deadline is making Tarik Skubal one of baseball's loudest names. Jon Heyman of The New York Post reported that chances of a Skubal trade were rising, as rival executives started to outline what it might take to pry the left-hander loose.
Detroit was 20-31, in last place in the American League Central, and had lost 14 of its last 16 games. That kind of slide is what turns speculation into front-office homework, especially when the player in question is one of the best pitchers available and the deadline is close enough to force real conversations instead of idle summer noise.
The price, according to the rival executives, is steep enough to make a deal hard to complete and expensive enough to explain why it has not happened yet. One said a Skubal trade would likely require one top-100 prospect, a top-15 prospect and one more throw-in. Another put the asking range even higher, saying it would take “a couple of top 10 prospects for a couple months of him.” A third said a package could start with one top-50 prospect and another top-100 prospect, and could climb to a top-10 prospect plus a fringe top-100 player and one or two throw-in types.
That kind of return would reflect the gap between Skubal’s value on the mound and the realities of a midseason trade. Rival executives described him as a two-month rental with injury risk, while noting he would be owed close to $12 million to $14 million after a trade. That salary burden is part of the calculus for clubs considering a run at him, because the buyer would have to not only pay the prospect cost but also find room for the remaining money.
One executive said the package could improve if Detroit agreed to pay down part of the salary, a move that would ease the burden on the acquiring team and likely widen the field of bidders. Another said the kind of club willing to pay the premium would need to see Skubal as someone who can move the needle in October, not just cover innings in August and September. He pointed to two starts in a five-game series as the kind of margin that can decide everything.
That is the tension now hanging over the Tigers. They are struggling badly enough to make selling logical, but Skubal is also the kind of arm that can anchor a future run if Detroit decides the right move is to hold. A trade would not just be a deadline swing; it would be a statement about whether a last-place team believes its best player is more useful in a pennant race somewhere else than he is in its own dugout. If the Tigers decide to move him, the return will have to be big, and the payroll angle could decide whether a deal gets done at all.
