History shows Tigers can easiily afford to extend Tarik Skubal if they want to

Time and time again, listening to Scott Harris would have you believing that the Detroit Tigers are a small market team. And sure, Detroit isn't New York or Los Angeles, but that doesn't mean the Tigers don't have a rabid fanbase.

Fans drive revenue, and that's part of the reason pundits are lumping the Tigers in with some of the big boys when it comes to pursuing top-tier free agents like Kyle Tucker. And seeing that there's an expectation Detroit has money to spend on the likes of Kyle Tucker, then it shouldn't be a leap to assume that the club also has the funds to lock down Tarik Skubal if it really wants to.

But that's not just posturing and projecting. The Tigers' own history shows that, when they set their mind to it, they can pretty much go dollar for dollar with the game's behemoths.

The Tigers' history shows that they have the financial means to keep Tarik Skubal in Detroit beyond 2026

Baseball Tonight broke down the Tigers' Skubal predicament and came to the easy conclusion that they can, in fact, afford the record-setting contract the superstar ace will command. The reason being, for a large chunk of time, they were one of the league's biggest spenders.

From 2007-2017, the Tigers spent $1.6 billion on payroll, a mark dwarfed by only three teams: the Boston Red Sox ($1.8 billion), the Los Angeles Dodgers ($1.9 billion), and the New York Yankees ($2.3 billion).

Dave Dombrowski was at the helm then, and what the former Tigers' general manager understood was the classic misquote from Field of Dreams, "if you build it, they will come." The "they" in this case is the fans, but also the hard-earned money flowing from the fans' pockets into the team's coffers.

Detroit's spending spree started on the heels of them winning the American League pennant in 2006, and continued through arguably the most successful run of baseball in Detroit during the modern era. Attendance rose from 2,024,431 in 2005, the year before the Tigers' World Series appearance to 3,202,645 in 2008. For reference, Detroit drew 1,858,295 fans to the ballpark in 2024 and 2,024,431 in 2025.

Much of that spending came on extensions to keep promising young players in town. The best example was the blockbuster extension given to Miguel Cabrera in 2014 that, in total, was worth $292 million over 10 years. Factoring in inflation, that expenditure is worth roughly $400 million in today's money.

As the cracks in those Tigers' clubs began to show and the team entered a rebuild after 2017, it made sense to pull back on payroll. Now, however, the team is at the precipice of building something great, and that will require opening the checkbook. There's no better player to do that for than Tarik Skubal.

Much of what we've heard so far about the negotiations has been outdating information and/or stuff that's been heavily spun by Skubal's camp. The Tigers have been very tight-lipped on their part. However, it's clear to everyone that Detroit can't possibly get fair value for Skubal in a trade and would be hard-pressed to compile enough pieces to fill the void his departure would create.

The Tigers simply need Skubal more than he needs them. That means they're going to have to pay up, and they've shown us in the past that they certainly have the financial might to get a blockbuster deal done. Meanwhile, the fans have always shown them that they'll reward the club for its investments.