Ken Rosenthal's Tarik Skubal trade report emphasizes exhausting Tigers narrative

This past offseason, everyone and their mother had an opinion on whether or not the Tigers should've traded Tarik Skubal. Tigers fans could barely go two days without seeing a new trade proposal, whether it was from an outlet as legitimate as The Athletic or as illegitimate as someone with a username like "YankeesLuvr2009" cooking up the worst packages you've ever seen on Twitter.

It was exhausting, and even recalling it is still kind of exhausting. What made it worse was that everyone was saying the same things, laying out the same talking points on both sides of the to-trade-or-not-to-trade argument over and over again.

Now that the Tigers are tanking, fans find ourselves in the same position of having to endure the same conversation multiple times over, months after we thought it was over.

Ken Rosenthal wrote on Monday that the odds of Skubal being traded are going up, but also that a deal ultimately depends on whether or not the Tigers can dig themselves out of the hole they've created.

Yeah, dude. We know that.

Not everyone's plugged into the game to the same degree, and there's value in writing to the lowest common denominator when you work for a national outlet. But it's impossible for Tigers fans not to feel exasperated and even angry that we're going to be subjected to this again.

Baseball writers are back to stating the obvious with Tigers, Tarik Skubal trade rumors

The solution to our frustrations is very clear: the Tigers need to start playing better baseball.

They offered a glimpse of that on Monday, when the offense put up double-digit runs for the first time in over a month and signaled that they're not fully dead yet. There were things to hate — namely, the way the bullpen almost blew a six-run lead — but it was at least a gasping breath when fans have been convinced the Tigers are dead.

The optimistic among us might be looking forward to June because of that game. A new month is the turning of a page. The Tigers just got Kerry Carpenter back, and Gleyber Torres returns on Tuesday. Skubal threw a sim game and his next stop could be a rehab assignment.

But do any of us trust the likes of Rosenthal, of Jim Bowden, of even Jeff Passan to stop with the trade proposals and the speculation even if the Tigers have a near-perfect June and July?

No. Pandora's box is open now, and we're in for a long few months.

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