LOS ANGELES – The Los Angeles Dodgers had only one player in mind to upgrade a roster with no glaring needs.
“It was [Tarik] Skubal or nothing,” said manager Dave Roberts.
The Dodgers never even kicked the tires on acquiring any other starting pitchers, according to president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman.
(Photo by Luke Hales/Getty Images)
Their discussions with the Tigers started picking up Friday. A day later, the back-and-forths became more aggressive. The groundwork for a trade materialized quickly. Just before first pitch Saturday night at 6:11 p.m. against the visiting Boston Red Sox, Roberts had already heard the deal for Skubal was “pretty much done.”
To the astonishment of no one — including the contenders who missed out — but to the chagrin of many, the reigning back-to-back World Series champs landed the reigning back-to-back American League Cy Young Award winner.
“It just seems like there’s always blowback with us,” Roberts said. “People are passionate. We feel good about it. There’s nothing that we did that no one else couldn’t have done.”
As the news broke, one of the only teams with a package of top prospects capable of rivaling the Dodgers’ best was 30 miles away in Anaheim. Putting Skubal alongside Cy Young favorite Jacob Misiorowski and Kyle Harrison could have given the Brewers, who have the best record in baseball, one of the most overpowering October starting trios imaginable.
Instead, Skubal’s fortifying what was already the most talented roster in the game.
“I think the initial reaction from people is wanting to be mad or upset, but [I] just wasn’t, really,” Brewers outfielder Sal Frelick told me Sunday morning. “I think everyone in here really believes in this room. It’s not like we’re here saying, ‘We don’t need anybody, we’re good,’ but it’s not like we’re also saying, ‘We need this guy,’ or ‘We need so much help.’”
Still, Frelick acknowledged some disappointment.
This was the first time since Frelick debuted in 2023 that he could recall hearing his team involved in blockbuster discussions at the deadline.
“So, I think that’s maybe the only area where the disappointment can come from,” Frelick explained, “just because you know there was an offer made, we were trying to get him, and we didn’t.”
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Friedman officially found out he got Skubal during Saturday’s loss to the Red Sox.
The Dodgers sent two top-100 prospects in outfielder Zyhir Hope and right-handed pitcher River Ryan to the Tigers as well as 2023 third-round pick Brady Smith, but they managed to get the deal done without losing any of their big-league players or either of their top two outfield prospects, Josue De Paula or Mike Sirota, in the deal.
Asked whether he was shocked the Tigers agreed to the offer, Friedman exhaled and paused for a moment before answering.
“Ummm, no,” he said. “I mean, I felt like we were being really aggressive and that we put some really talented players on the table, so I felt like that gave us a really good chance. How good, I didn’t obviously have a sense for what other teams were doing. But, no.”
Friedman claimed that keeping Skubal from joining another contender wasn’t the impetus for the move.
“We’re doing what we can to put ourselves in the best position to have the strongest 26-man roster in October that we feel like gives us the best chance to win 11 games,” he said.
Skubal, obviously, increases those chances.
On July 31, FanGraphs gave the Dodgers 25.7% odds to win the World Series. After the trade, those odds jumped another 5%. The Dodgers were swept at home by the Red Sox this weekend, but the addition of Skubal, who met his new teammates in the dugout during Sunday afternoon’s defeat, lessened the sting.
“I don’t think I’ve felt this good after getting swept,” Roberts said, “so that’s a silver lining, I guess.”
Now, the Brewers and the rest of MLB have less than 24 hours to pivot to other options while the Dodgers, who had no clear needs to begin with, consider other ways to restock their pipeline of talent.
When healthy, the options in the Dodgers’ rotation include multiple two-time Cy Young Award winners in Skubal and Blake Snell, the reigning World Series MVP in Yoshinobu Yamamoto, four-time MVP Shohei Ohtani, 2024 All-Star Tyler Glasnow, 2026 All-Star Justin Wrobleski, Roki Sasaki, Emmet Sheehan and veteran Eric Lauer — far more arms than they’ll need the rest of this season or in October.
On Tuesday, Glasnow is going out on assignment while Snell is expected to make his final rehab start before returning to the rotation. The Dodgers maintain confidence that Ohtani will be back pitching by season’s end, and he is expected to start playing catch again this coming week in Chicago. They have already informed Lauer he’ll be moving into a bullpen bulk role.
Now that Kiké Hernández is healthy, they also have more right-handed bats off the bench than they need, potentially making outfielder Alex Call expendable.
So, one option for them is to sell some of their excess — either at the big-league or minor-league level — to continue bolstering a farm system that remains among the best in the sport, even after losing Hope and Ryan.
They still have three of baseball’s best outfield prospects in Josue De Paula and Mike Sirota at Double-A and Eduardo Quintero at High-A. De Paula, who has homered four times in his last three games and has 20 on the year, will need to be added to the 40-man roster this winter to be protected from the Rule 5 draft.
“We’re still having a number of different conversations on a number of different fronts,” Friedman said. “For us, we’re always trying to balance keeping one eye on the present and one eye on the future.”
Adding further to the big-league roster, however, is “less likely” to happen, according to Friedman.
“I think coming into this deadline, our mindset was we’re going to be really aggressive for one player,” he repeated.
The news that the Dodgers landed Skubal began trickling to their players shortly after their game Saturday night. Roberts chatted with his new ace on the phone after the Tigers finished their game in Sacramento.
(Photo by Luke Hales/Getty Images)
Closer Edwin Díaz found out via social media. Soon after, he started getting calls on the way home from friends and family, including his brother.
“Dodgers always do something to get better,” Díaz told me. “So, as a player, I think I was expecting that.”
That doesn’t mean the Dodgers players take their front office’s aggressiveness for granted.
“It’s a statement from this organization to the rest of the league and the world that they’re not just satisfied with what happened the last couple years,” said Dodgers infielder Miguel Rojas. “And we had a little conversation with Doc (Roberts) the other day, the position player group, and he’s really into winning this year.
“Obviously he cares about winning the last two, and it’s really important for him and for us, but he said he don’t really care about what happened the last two years. He wants to win this year. So, it’s kind of like a pressed button for us to kind of continue to go and not let the rest of the league catch up to our standards.”
As for whether the big bad Dodgers are breaking the game?
“Passionately disagree,” Friedman said.
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