What Tarik Skubal Would Cost the Brewers and Why It’s Worth It.
The 2024 Milwaukee Brewers are in exceptionally good shape. They’re heavy favorites to win their division, and they might even have a shot at a first-round bye in the postseason. Only one ingredient is missing from their recipe for a championship, and it’s waiting for them in Detroit.
Brewers Video
If the season ended today, and if whatever catastrophe caused that decision to be made didn’t lead us all to forget such trivialities, the American League Cy Young Award could very well go to Tarik Skubal. The Tigers lefty stands in a virtual tie for the league leadership in WAR at both Baseball Reference and FanGraphs. In 110 innings, he’s running a 2.37 ERA. He’s striking out 30% of opposing batters and walking 5% of them. Balancing actual results with expected ones based on batted-ball data and per-batter rates, Skubal has a case for being the best pitcher in baseball.
Alas, Skubal’s Tigers are as toothless as ever. The White Sox have securely locked them out of the cellar in the AL Central, but they’re safely ensconced in fourth place, and they’re not especially close to the Wild Card positions in the AL, either. Skubal has been superb, but his team can’t support him with enough runs, and not enough of his teammates are similarly excellent at run prevention.
Skubal is still under team control for two and a half more years. Thus, the Tigers can wait and see a while. They don’t have to trade him this month, and to do so, they’ll require a team to pay through the nose. Nor will getting that kind of haul be a problem, because teams will line up for the right to bid on a pitcher this good, with the chance to affect three pennant races (and three postseasons) before hitting free agency. Still, Skubal would be a risky hurler to hold onto, and not only because each passing year reduces his trade value incrementally.
