There’s the evil empire, and then there are the Dodgers – the merciless mega-team that just made baseball’s nightmare scenario official.
On Saturday night, with a day and a half to spare before Monday’s deadline, Los Angeles traded for reigning back-to-back American League Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal from the Detroit Tigers.
Take that in. The best pitcher on the planet is now on the best team in baseball.
In the days and hours leading up to the blockbuster trade, it started to feel less like a shock and more of an inevitability that Skubal would land in Hollywood. The surprising part was how little it took to acquire two months of Skubal, who is set to become a free agent after this season.
Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris settled for a meager return that included outfielder Zyhir Hope and right-handers River Ryan and Brady Smith. That package, which has since sparked fury and countless opinions within the industry about the smaller value that Los Angeles gave up, netted Detroit two top-100 prospects without gutting the top of the Dodgers’ farm system.
So, what’s the fallout? Let’s dive into what’s next for the Dodgers, and how the trade impacts the starting-pitching market and the rest of the National League now that the deadline’s biggest domino has fallen.
What’s Next For The Dodgers?
The defending back-to-back champions just got scarier, and they didn’t even have to touch their major league roster to do it. Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman leaned on his organizational depth to add the best pitcher in baseball to a rotation that already owned the third-best ERA (3.79) in the NL, and he did it thanks to a strong farm system that rival front offices have envied for years.
The Dodgers didn’t need Skubal, but that hardly mattered. If you can go and get the arm that can win you a third consecutive championship, you do it.
Now, Skubal slots in as the unquestioned Game 1 starter in October. Following an early-season elbow procedure, he’s back to his usual Cy-Young self, posting a 2.79 ERA with 116 strikeouts in 16 starts and 96 ⅔ innings this season, including a 2.03 ERA in July alone.
Tarik Skubal recorded his 1,000th career strikeout during the first inning of his final start with the Tigers last week. (Duane Burleson/Getty Images)
Skubal joins a ridiculously talented staff that includes reigning World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto, All-Star Justin Wrobleski, and right-handers Emmet Sheehan and Roki Sasaki.
The Dodgers are still confident Shohei Ohtani (left knee soreness) will pitch again this season, while Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow continue working their way back from the injured list. If everyone is healthy for the postseason, Wrobleski, Sheehan, and Sasaki will shift to the bullpen. It’s a mind-numbingly dominant pitching staff that should mentally suppress opposing hitters before they even step into the box.
There’s also another layer to this that shouldn’t be overlooked. Part of Friedman’s motivation to land Skubal was presumably to keep the southpaw away from the Brewers and Rays, two smaller-market clubs with the only other top farm systems that could compete with the Dodgers’ offer and pose a more serious threat in the playoffs. His trade for Skubal could also be viewed as an admission that he was starting to get nervous about the competition.
Now, Friedman has increased the gap between Los Angeles and everyone else. Skubal gets to experience life on the West Coast and use it as a trial run for a possible long-term future with the Dodgers. In the offseason, he’ll have the opportunity to sign there as a free agent. There’s the evil empire, and then there are the Dodgers.
What’s Next For The Starting-Pitching Market?
Skubal was always going to set the market, and now that the biggest name is off the board, the rest of the deadline has a clear runway to accelerate. Rival executives had been holding their breath on Skubal for weeks, in part because landing spots for the market’s other arms — Kevin Gausman, Clay Holmes, Casey Mize, George Kirby, Sandy Alcántara, Reid Detmers, Jose Soriano and more — were always going to hinge on which contenders whiffed on Skubal first.
The group of starting pitchers who are available and could be on the move is unusually deep this summer, and now it’s about to get picked apart in a hurry.
The next domino was Mets right-hander Freddy Peralta, who was traded to the Tampa Bay Rays in the early afternoon on Sunday. Miami has held firm on Alcántara for most of the summer, but with Monday’s 6 p.m. ET deadline bearing down, that stance will be tested by every team that missed on Skubal and still needs an upgrade. Toronto’s Gausman, a veteran rental on a last-place club, is squarely in the mix for teams like the Phillies, Cubs, Braves, Brewers and Rays.
Now, though, you have to wonder if the price for all these pitchers has changed after what Skubal went for. Almost everyone in the industry is shocked the Dodgers didn’t have to give up one or more of their top three prospects for their new ace.
Peralta netted the Mets three Rays prospects, ranked Nos. 15, 26 and 27 in Tampa Bay’s system, according to MLB Pipeline. Peralta has struggled this season with a 4.99 ERA and 1.48 WHIP in 22 starts, but his track record indicates he’s capable of better results.
Freddy Peralta is on the move, going from Queens to Florida. (Photo by Todd Kirkland/Getty Images)
Still, with the deadline’s headliner gone, expect the next 24 hours to bring a flurry of moves as several contenders — all of whom now know they’re chasing a fortified defending champion — scramble to find their next-best option before the board clears out.
What’s Next For The Rest Of The National League?
If you’re the Braves, Phillies, Cubs or Brewers, Saturday night just moved the goalposts regarding what winning in October will require. The Dodgers were already the team to beat. Now they’ve added the pitcher with the third-highest strikeout rate in baseball to a roster that already looked primed for a three-peat. Every other NL contender just got a very public reminder of how far behind they’re playing.
Milwaukee, sitting on one of the best farm systems in the sport, was viewed as one of the few threats with enough ammunition to actually pry Skubal away. Instead, the Brewers watched the Dodgers get him without touching a single big leaguer. That had to sting. That had to be a gut check for a Milwaukee front office that had been patiently building for this kind of moment.
Atlanta and Philadelphia, both connected to Skubal in recent weeks, now have to decide whether to go hard for Gausman or another rotation arm just to keep pace. Or they can stand pat because they’ll run into the buzz saw that is the Dodgers, anyway. How deflating is that?
There’s a psychological cost to all of this that shouldn’t be understated. Every contender in the NL now has to build its deadline plan around the assumption that if it meets the Dodgers in October, it’s facing peak Ohtani (whenever his knee cooperates), Yamamoto and now Skubal in a playoff series. Especially with MLB’s Collective Bargaining Agreement expiring and a lockout looming, it might push rivals to get aggressive before the deadline.
Either that, or contenders can face the uncomfortable truth and accept that 2026 was always going to run through Los Angeles anyway.
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