Rumor: Detroit Tigers willing to trade everyone, including Tarik Skubal

The Detroit Tigers are rumored to be open for business

The Detroit Tigers rumor mill has been pretty quite up to this point. But Ken Rosenthal from The Athletic just dropped a bombshell one week before the trade deadline.

He’s reporting that the Detroit Tigers are willing to listen to offers on “just about everyone,” and that includes starting pitcher Tarik Skubal.

In the article, Rosenthal reports that the Tigers hope to capitalize on teams who miss out on other top starting pitchers on the trade market like Oakland’s Frankie Montas and Cincinnati’s Luis Castillo. He also states that he’s heard they are optimistic they can get a “big return” for him.

Skubal has 3.88 ERA this season in 19 starts. He’s had an up-and-down year, having a 2.33 ERA in his first 11 starts, but this was followed by a period in which he had an ERA close to 10. He was really struggling with his glove side command for a while, but recent starts suggest that the issue may be resolved.

Skubal has four more years of team control after this season, so the Tigers will want a massive haul in return. Rosenthal lists the Dodgers, Cardinals, Rangers, and Orioles as possible suiters.

The likelihood of them actually moving Skubal, at least before the Aug. 2 trade deadline, still seems low, but seeing this is still incredibly insulting for Tigers fans.

They’ve waited five+ years for this “rebuild” to be complete, and now they’re going to hold another firesale? What a joke, what an absolute joke. Skubal was a part of the haul of pitching prospects that this team was supposedly building around, and now they want to ship him off to?

The only scenario in which Skubal should be moved is if your getting a generational talent like Juan Soto or Shohei Ohtani in return. They cannot—I repeat, cannot—trade him for more prospects. They’ve been playing that game for years now and it hasn’t worked. Trade all the relievers you want, but you can’t move a pitcher like Skubal for more lottery tickets.

The message fans should take from this is that that rebuild has officially failed. Skubal still likely won’t get moved before the deadline, but the fact that they’re shopping him around is such a disgrace.