Dodgers get Tarik Skubal as Tigers land prime prospects: MLB Trade Grades
Dodgers get: LHP Tarik Skubal
Tigers get: OF Zyhir Hope, RHP River Ryan and RHP Brady Smith
Dodgers: A+
Tigers: B
If Skubal wants to return to Detroit to stuff his belongings into cardboard boxes and then hop in an RV and haul across the country to get to Southern California — maybe he stops to visit the Rocky Mountains or the Grand Canyon, maybe he spends a night or two playing baccarat in Las Vegas — he can take his time with his arrival. The Dodgers don’t need him for August or September. This, obviously, is about the handful of starts he could make in October, when the Dodgers will again attempt to leverage their embarrassment of riches into a title.
L.A. has built a deep, talented farm system. That’s what allows them to pull off a deal like this (and, sure, it helps that they can backfill any hint of a deficiency in free agency, as they do every winter). But they’ll cruise into the postseason — health provided, of course — with Skubal, a reigning two-time Cy Young Award winner; Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who has pitched like an ace; Shohei Ohtani, you might be familiar with his work; Blake Snell, another two-time Cy Young Award winner; and, if they get desperate, All-Star Justin Wrobleski is enjoying a breakout campaign and Tyler Glasnow features ace-like stuff when available. This is like when you see a delivery truck back into the driveway of that neighbor who has everything. “Oh, now they’re getting a second stone pizza oven for their patio?!”
Zyhir Hope could blossom into a star outfielder. And so could Eduardo Quintero, Mike Sirota, Josue De Paula, James Tibbs III and Charles Davalan — five other Dodgers outfield prospects who all cracked Keith Law’s recent top-70 prospects list. For the Tigers, a timid offseason and a sluggish first couple of months doomed them and made this feel inevitable. In the wide-open American League, maybe they can still hang around. — Zack Meisel
Dodgers: A+
Tigers: A
Let’s not belabor the Dodgers’ side of this: The reigning back-to-back World Series champs just acquired the reigning back-to-back AL Cy Young Award winner without parting with any of their top three prospects.
Full stop.
Why not make this move? If it succeeds, you’re legends. If it fails, you go to bed after that last October loss knowing you couldn’t possibly have done more in pursuit of a three-peat. And you can still throw a bunch of money at Skubal in free agency to keep him in Dodger blue.
I come from a long line of Tigers fans. This has been a torturous season for my people. My dad texted the other day asking for my gut feel on whether Skubal would be traded. The gist of my response was this: “I think the value the Tigers are going to be offered for Skubal will be so high that they’ll believe they’re doing significant damage to next year’s team if they turn it down.” That’s what happened here. The reason these trade talks didn’t drag into Sunday was that it became clear that the team with the most to offer was willing to offer the most. Assuming Jesús Made (Brewers), Theo Gillen (Rays) and the Dodgers’ top three prospects were off the table, two top-50 prospects is a good get. There just aren’t other teams willing to top that, especially for a rental.
Keith Law recently ranked Hope as the No. 26 prospect in the sport, with Ryan close behind at No. 41. With outfielder Max Clark (No. 13) — who hit his first MLB homer shortly before news of the trade broke Saturday night — and shortstop Bryce Rainer (No. 35) already in the fold, the Tigers now have four of Law’s top-50 prospects.
The Tigers are, at least in theory, still in the hunt this season. That’s still the case. Even without Skubal. Even without Casey Mize, assuming he’s traded. This move was made with next year (and the year after that, and the year after that …) in mind. Two months of Skubal for all of this? Yet it leaves the Tigers in a position to have at least a puncher’s chance at a wild-card spot. That seems to be the needle their front office was trying to thread in a Skubal deal. — Stephen J. Nesbitt
Dodgers: A
Tigers: B-
As inevitable as the Dodgers feel in the moment, it’s important to remember how close they’ve come to elimination in each of the past two postseasons. They needed to win a bullpen game to get past the Padres in the 2024 NLDS, and they needed Yoshinobu Yamamoto to submit a historic performance (and, you know, a pretty memorable home run and some clutch defense) to come back and seize last year’s World Series from the Blue Jays.
And in 2025, that was with the full complement of their rotation healthy. Yes, L.A. can slow-play it with Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow and Shohei Ohtani all regular season to give those guys the best chance to be healthy when it matters in October. But they still might not be. And rather than upgrading their biggest right-now need with a right-handed backup infielder to help Tommy Edman at second base, the Dodgers filled their biggest plausible October need.
Nine days ago, I suggested the return for Skubal would likely look like Detroit’s for David Price in 2015: a headlining top-25 or top-50 prospect, a valuable second piece at or close to the big leagues, and a lower-level flier. That’s Hope, Ryan and Smith, in that order, with Ryan a much more tantalizing second piece than Matthew Boyd was 11 years ago.
How you ultimately feel about the deal probably comes down to your take on Ryan — whether he’s an ace-in-waiting or an oft-injured tease. (Those two categories can overlap so tightly.) If you look at Ryan’s stuff and see someone capable of stepping into Skubal’s place in the rotation right now and the top half of that group in 2027 for Detroit, this is an “A” return. If you’re concerned that he has 212 2/3 professional innings to his name and is two months older than Juan Soto, you might be a bit lower. Because he spent all of 2025 on the major-league injured list, Ryan has just four big-league starts and well over a year of service time, meaning there’s less team control than for the standard pitching prospect. Pitchers can put it all together late, but that’s the main issue that has me docking Detroit’s return. — Tim Britton
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