A furious race to the finish line capped one of the wildest baseball trade deadlines in recent memory, but a familiar heavyweight landed the top prize.
The Dodgers softened the impact of a three-game sweep at the hands of the Boston Red Sox over the weekend by acquiring left-handed ace Tarik Skubal from the Detroit Tigers. Leading the NL West by 10 games with two months left in the regular season, the Dodgers are set to plug the Cy Young Award winner into the rotation on Tuesday at Wrigley Field.
Before taking the mound, Skubal took to the mic on Monday for the first time in a Dodgers uniform. He thanked the Tigers for seven great seasons and wagged a finger at the other 28 major league teams not involved in the blockbuster trade for not making the investment and then blaming the deep-pocketed Dodgers for seizing the day.
“Every team could trade for me. I don’t sympathize with people that blame the Dodgers for anything they’ve done,” Skubal said. “It’s a winning organization. I really don’t sympathize with people that are complaining because the Dodgers do all the right things.”
Skubal arrives in Los Angeles with the Dodgers in the midst of a bid to three-peat as World Series champions. They entered Monday with 69 wins, tied for tops in the majors with the Milwaukee Brewers.
Milwaukee made a bid for Skubal. The Yankees threw an offer at Detroit.
And maybe the Brewers (who acquired Cardinals right-hander and Dodgers discard Dustin May), Braves (righty Tyler Mahle from the Giants), Cubs (right-hander Clay Holmes from the Mets) and Red Sox (All-Star catcher Adley Rutschman from the Orioles) all got better with moves before the deadline.
Will “better” be enough to compete with the fortified two-time defending champion Dodgers?
The Dodgers exit the deadline with arguably the best rotation and lineup in baseball, largely assembled by outspending — in cash, assets used in trades or some combination of both — the rest of the league.
Skubal was only available because the market puts his going rate beyond the reach of the Tigers.
Dylan Cease became the seventh big-league pitcher with an annual average salary of at least $30 million when he left the Padres to sign with the Toronto Blue Jays last winter. That pricepoint is no doubt the baseline for Skubal, especially if he delivers a critical postseason win or three this fall.
When the Dodgers need something, they buy it. Their bidding arsenal of prospects, cash and deferred payments dwarfs the assets on hand of nearly every other MLB franchise. It’s a factor in the organization’s sustained success. The Dodgers can recover — or spend to cover up — when mistakes are made or injuries deal them a short hand.
The willingness of ownership and players to defer massive chunks of salary is a wild card.
The Dodgers now have five of the 13 highest-paid starting pitchers in baseball — two-way stud Shohei Ohtani ($70 million per year), lefty Blake Snell ($36.4 million), Skubal ($32 million for 2026 after winning in arbitration), right-hander Tyler Glasnow ($27.3 million) and righty Yoshinobu Yamamoto ($27.1 million).
The Dodgers also lead the league in deferred contract cash at reported $1.1 billion. Ohtani, for example, makes $2 million in base salary. He will begin receiving $68 million per year deferred starting in 2034 through 2043, at age 48.
Just those five starters are being paid more this season than the entire payroll of 19 of the 30 big-league teams.
Until they acquired right-hander Luis Castillo from the Mariners over the weekend, the Chicago White Sox didn’t have a single player making an average annual salary of more than $18 million per year.
For 2 1/2 seasons in Chicago, Castillo has the potential to earn around $52 million. That’s just a few million short of the $55 million signing bonus L.A. doled out to sign top free agent Kyle Tucker away from the Cubs before this season.
In theory, maybe 28 other teams had a shot at acquiring Skubal from the Tigers.
In reality, none of them are the Dodgers.
–Field Level Media
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