The Tarik Skubal waiting game came to an end a little before the MLB Trade Deadline this weekend as the Detroit Tigers traded their ace to the evil empire, also known as the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The trade stirred up a lot of controversy around baseball, with fans calling it unfair and saying that the MLB shouldn’t allow a fleecing like this to happen. The rich shouldn’t be able to get richer for a bag of potato chips and some half-chewed bubble gum, right?
What if that wasn’t the trade return like everyone believes?
Tigers' return in the Skubal trade was better than you think
People are going to call the acquisitions of Zyhir Hope, River Ryan, and Brady Smith “a bag of chips and some half-chewed bubble gum,” but I’m here to say that the return isn’t actually that bad.
Consider the circumstances: Skubal didn’t necessarily want to be traded (or so he said), but he also wasn’t likely to re-sign in the offseason. He’s essentially a two-month rental, and the Tigers were able to swing a couple of top-100 MLB prospects, including the headliner, White, who’s been killing it in Triple-A this season.
That, along with a top-100 prospect in Ryan — who kind of looks like he could be related to Skubal — and a pitcher who’s now the Tigers’ 14th-best prospect, isn’t the worst return in the world for a guy who may not even sign with the Dodgers long-term. I mean, the rumored top free agency destination for Skubal was Los Angeles, but there’s always a chance he could dislike his time with the organization and choose to sign somewhere else.
If that does happen, the Dodgers will have traded two of their best prospects (now two of the Tigers’ top-five prospects) and a third-round pick from 2023 for a two-month rental.
If they don’t win the World Series and don’t re-sign Skubal, we could start the narrative that Scott Harris fleeced the Dodgers.
Zyhir Hope is the type of player the Tigers needed
When I first heard of the Tigers’ return for Skubal, I immediately looked into all three minor leaguers.
I first checked Ryan’s pitching stats and noticed that he was also on the injured list. He wasn’t playing all that well this season with a 4.46 ERA in eight starts, and he missed the entire 2025 season after undergoing Tommy John surgery. Hey, at least that’s out of the way. Ryan has a ton of promise with a career 3.43 ERA in the minors with 10.79 strikeouts per nine innings.
Smith wasn’t a reported name in the trade until way later on, so the next step was checking on the crown jewel of the deal’s stats.
Hope was the star that the Tigers were getting in return, and he was the Dodgers’ fifth-best prospect. That may not sound great, but they have a loaded farm system with five prospects in the MLB’s top 25. He’s hitting .293 in 372 at-bats this season with 23 home runs, 87 RBIs, and he’s stolen 18 bases in just 94 games. He’s exactly what Tigers fans have been begging for.
Tigers fans wanted Harris to acquire a bat with some pop who could become part of a young, lethal lineup along with Dillon Dingler, Kevin McGonigle, Riley Greene, and now Max Clark. If we assume that Kerry Carpenter, Spencer Torkelson, and Gleyber Torres are just having a bad year and will be much better moving forward, Hope would give the Tigers a dangerous lineup 1-9.
Add in a guy like Parker Meadows, who can be a plus batter when healthy, and that gives Detroit a lineup with a perfect mix of power, contact, and speed.
People are sleeping on this trade on the Tigers’ side because they just assume that Detroit gave up the best pitcher in baseball for a whole lot of nothing. That’s not the case.
Detroit got a potential top-of-the-order hitter who has pop and speed, as well as a pitcher who could fit right into that rotation in a year or two as a sub-4 ERA guy. Not too shabby for a two-month rental.
Add us as a preferred source on Google