The Tarik Skubal sweepstakes have been the biggest storyline of this MLB trade deadline for weeks, and it's not close. Back-to-back AL Cy Young winner, in the last year of his deal, pitching for a Tigers team that's been stumbling — every contender with a pulse has at least called. The problem is nobody actually knows what it costs to pry him loose. Rosenthal says he does.
Ken Rosenthal teased what he and Will Sammon are hearing about Detroit's asking price for Skubal.
What @WillSammon and I are hearing about the Tigers’ potential asking price for Skubal and much more on the trade deadline, unlocked and free to read: https://t.co/q8R4Ilfm8I
Rosenthal's report, done alongside Will Sammon, lays out what the Tigers are seeking in return, and it fits the pattern that's been forming all summer: an NL executive already told reporters the early asks were going to be "outrageous," and nothing about Detroit's posture suggests they're bluffing. Skubal isn't a rental in the usual sense — he's a two-time Cy Young winner who just turned into the best pitcher on the planet at the exact moment he's about to hit free agency, which means Detroit isn't pricing him like a half-season rental. They're pricing him like a Hall of Fame arm walking out the door.
That's the tension driving the whole deadline. Skubal is a free agent after this season, and by his own admission the Tigers haven't put an extension offer on the table — there won't be one until the year is over, if there's one at all. League evaluators expect him to chase Yoshinobu Yamamoto's $325 million record on the open market, with some floating the idea he becomes baseball's first $400 million pitcher. That number matters here: Detroit knows any team trading for him gets two months of Skubal, not two years, unless they win a bidding war in the winter too.
So the calculus for contenders gets brutal fast. Pay an outrageous prospect package for a rental ace with zero guarantee of an extension, or hold onto your farm system and hope the price comes down closer to August 3. Rosenthal has flagged before that Detroit's willingness to move Skubal has fluctuated with their own record — the worse the Tigers play, the more real a trade becomes, and the better they play, the more it looks like they just keep him and take a qualifying-offer swing at the postseason themselves.
Whatever Detroit is actually asking for, it sets the market for every other arm available this summer. If the Tigers' price on Skubal is truly "outrageous," it gives every other seller cover to hold their own players for a similarly absurd return — and it gives every buyer a reason to pump the brakes and see if Detroit blinks first. That's why one report about an asking price can shape the entire deadline, not just one team's roster.