Jeff Passan just set the record straight with Tigers, Tarik Skubal arbitration case

In a recent column for ESPN, Jeff Passan didn’t just make a “bold prediction” about the Detroit Tigers' offseason. He delivered a reality check.

In a few short paragraphs, one of the most influential baseball writers in the sport cut through the noise surrounding Tarik Skubal’s arbitration case and reframed it the way it actually deserves to be framed: not as a cold, technical debate over service-time comparables, but as a referendum on the best pitcher in baseball.

Because that’s what Skubal is. He isn’t “a very good young arm.” He isn’t “Detroit’s ace.” He isn’t “a frontline starter in his prime.” He is the first American League pitcher since Pedro Martínez to win back-to-back Cy Young Awards.

And yet, the Tigers are walking into an arbitration room arguing that the reigning king of his profession is worth $19 million, while Skubal is asking for $32 million — a number that would obliterate the previous record for a third-year arbitration pitcher.

Passan’s column does something crucial: it acknowledges how arbitration is supposed to work, and then explains why Skubal’s case exists outside the normal gravitational pull of that system.

Yes, arbitration rooms are unpredictable. Yes, teams usually “win” on precedent. Yes, Detroit can point to charts and comps and service-time benchmarks. But none of those pitchers were Skubal. None of them were coming off two Cy Young seasons. None of them were universally regarded as the best pitcher in baseball. None of them were staring at a league where “lesser” arms make $30 million annually in free agency.

Arbitration isn’t supposed to be philosophical. It’s transactional. It’s built to suppress salaries until players hit the open market. But even that system has to bend when reality becomes too loud to ignore.

Jeff Passan says Tarik Skubal will win his arbitration battle with the Tigers

You can’t ask Skubal to pretend he doesn’t know what Gerrit Cole or Yoshinobu Yamamoto make. You can’t ask him to pretend he isn’t better, right now, than almost every pitcher in the world.

Passan’s point is simple, and devastating to the Tigers’ posture: at some point, greatness breaks the model.

Detroit can walk in armed with precedent. Skubal walks in armed with history –– and that’s why Passan says he’ll win. Not because the Tigers are villains, because Skubal’s camp is clever, or because arbitration is “rigged" –– but because when a panel of three people is asked to decide what the best pitcher in baseball is worth, the answer cannot start with a “1.”

For a franchise trying to convince its fanbase that a new era has begun — that this isn’t the same old Tigers, that they’re serious about building something real — this case matters beyond dollars. It’s about whether Detroit sees Skubal as a line item, or as what he actually is: the face of the franchise, the foundation of contention and a superstar at the peak of his power.