The back-to-back Cy Young winner is doing exactly what you'd expect from the best pitcher on a team that still has a pulse in the standings: showing up, saying the right things, and letting the front office sweat the business side. That's the picture Jon Heyman painted in his latest round of trade notes, and it's the one Tigers fans have been bracing for since the offseason went by without an extension.
Jon Heyman's deadline notes on Skubal, plus Peralta, Soriano, Detmers and the Dodgers.
https://t.co/oFya6y5Dy8 MLB trade notes: Skubal, a “great soldier,” may stay for now with Tigers (but he’ll surely be elsewhere next year), plus notes on Peralta, Soriano, Detmers and Dodgers
Heyman's framing is blunt: Skubal will likely stay a "great soldier" with the Tigers for now, but he's expected to be elsewhere next year. That's not a throwaway line. It lines up with everything Skubal himself has said publicly about a long-term deal in Detroit, which is basically that there isn't one on the table and there won't be until the season ends.
Skubal is playing 2026 on a 1-year, $32 million deal he won in arbitration, and he's set to hit free agency after this season. He's told reporters flatly that the Tigers never made him a long-term offer this offseason and that nothing is coming until the year is over. Given that he's projected to command something in the neighborhood of $400 million on the open market as a two-time reigning Cy Young winner, it's not hard to see why Detroit is more likely to extend the runway than the roster.
That's the tension sitting underneath every note in Heyman's report. The Tigers get one more year of an ace pitching like the best in baseball, but they're doing it knowing the exit is basically pre-written. Other clubs know it too, which is why names like the Cubs, Braves, Rays, Astros and Yankees keep circling, and why Heyman tossed the Dodgers in as a wild card even in a notes column that was supposedly about Peralta, Soriano and Detmers.
For now, the version of this story that matters is the one where Skubal keeps taking the ball every 5th day for a Tigers team that still believes it has a real shot this October. Whether that belief survives contact with the trade deadline, and whether Detroit blinks and moves him before he walks for nothing, is the actual drama here. Everything else is just notes.