The most painful (and dumb) trade Tigers can make at 2025 Winter Meetings

Let’s get this out of the way right now: if the Detroit Tigers trade Tarik Skubal at the 2025 Winter Meetings, it won’t just sting. It will be the kind of pain that lives in the bones of a fanbase for decades. It would be the single most avoidable, self-inflicted wound of the Scott Harris era — and for a franchise with a long list of “what were they thinking?” decisions, that’s saying something.

Every team in baseball wants to trade for Skubal. Of course they do. He just finished a season where he looked like the best pitcher on planet earth. He's a back-to-back Cy Young winner— the kind of arm that changes a franchise’s trajectory. The Tigers, meanwhile, are … well, the type of team still trying to figure out what their trajectory actually is.

But here’s the part that makes this whole conversation so maddening: the Tigers have no business being the team that actually trades him. Not now. Not at the Winter Meetings. Not when Skubal is the entire foundation of the pitching staff, the lone player who gives Detroit legitimacy every fifth day.

Skubal is not just an ace — he is the Tigers' identity. And you don’t trade your identity. Not when fans are begging for a reason to believe again.

No return would make a Tarik Skubal trade "worth it" for the Tigers at Winter Meetings

Sure, the Tigers would get a haul for Skubal –– some prospects, maybe an MLB-ready bat or two. They may even get a “wow” package that would make all the national reporters say things like, “Huge win for Detroit’s long-term outlook.”

But here’s the thing the nerd models and trade simulators forget: there is nothing “long-term” about the hole Skubal’s departure would leave. Nobody the Tigers get back replaces one of the top pitchers in the game.

You don’t replace 180+ innings of dominance with a handful of “maybe someday” players. You don’t replace a staff anchor by pointing to WAR projections from a 20-year-old prospect and saying, “Look, this is fine.” Fans aren’t stupid. They’ve seen this movie. They know exactly what happens next.

The Tigers have already asked fans to sit through one rebuild. Then they pivoted. Then they half-pivoted. Then they declared they were “ready to compete” but stopped short of actually behaving like a team ready to compete ... which makes trading Skubal now — while insisting you’re trying to win — not just painful, but insulting.

If the Tigers are actually trying to build a winner, they don’t trade their ace. They build around him. They supplement him. They use him as the justification for spending, not the justification for avoiding it. Trading Skubal is what a franchise does when it’s terrified of taking the next step.

The Tigers have reached a crossroads: add around Skubal and try to win, or trade him, rip out the team's soul and pretend it's part of a "vision." One path leads to an actual competitive window. The other path leads to Riley Greene and Colt Keith looking around the clubhouse in two years and wondering why the team’s best players keep disappearing.

If Detroit ships out Skubal at the Winter Meetings, they’re not just punting on 2026. They’re punting on credibility. They’re telling the baseball world — and their own fans — that they’re too scared to commit to a winning team, too timid to spend, and too risk-averse to build around a legitimate ace who came up through their own system.

It would be the most painful move. It would be the dumbest move. And if the Tigers actually let it happen, then they deserve every ounce of criticism, anger, and disbelief that fans unleash afterward.