Latest Tigers trade deadline report creates more questions around Tarik Skubal trade

The Detroit Tigers upset most of the baseball world by trading ace Tarik Skubal to the Los Angeles Dodgers in a deal that many felt was light on the return, but now they are just confusing everyone with their messaging after the trade.

The latest reporting suggests the Tigers are not planning a fire sale at the trade deadline which is puzzling to say the least. Usually when a team trades its best player ahead of the deadline, that’s a signal to the fanbase and the league that a team is open for business.

After dealing Skubal, the Tigers should clearly be open to trading away their pending free agents like Casey Mize, Jack Flaherty, and Gleyber Torres. Their run differential - +63, the second-best mark in the AL - and recent surge towards the Wild Card picture (2.5 games back!) say that they should not do so. If they think they can “thread the needle” and remain competitive the rest of this season, it raises even more questions about the Skubal deal.

While Skubal maintained to the end that he didn’t want to be traded, recent comments he made about his arbitration case against the Tigers prior to the season and how he knew about his elbow issue back in January may have rubbed the Tigers the wrong way and made them a bit more eager to get rid of him.

Maybe the Tigers are just saying they aren’t going to have a fire sale to try to entice teams to call, but that’s some risky three-dimensional chess to be playing right ahead of the deadline.

Tigers' Tarik Skubal trade to Dodgers seems even more puzzling after fire sale backtrack

This just feels like a situation in which there was a lot more going on behind the scenes than we know about. Skubal might've been more angered by the arbitration process than he let on. The way his injury was communicated could've easily ticked off the team the same way it ticked off fans.

It’s just sad that it had to end this way when the Tigers could have just ponied up and kept him around for a long time with an extension.

That’s all done now, though. If the Tigers really think they can remain competitive and actually make it to the playoffs without Skubal, that seems optimistic, if one wants to be charitable.

Anything is possible, but the Tigers just do not have enough pitching now to make a meaningful push. Maybe they shock everyone and actually add a starter, but that would just defy all common sense.

The Tigers should be selling and selling hard after the Skubal trade but if they don’t do that, then it really makes one wonder what the real deal was with the Skubal trade and what was going on behind the scenes. 

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