Every offseason has one name that decides where the money goes. This winter it is Tarik Skubal, and the numbers being attached to him should terrify 25 front offices.
Skubal, who turns 30 in November, is heading into free agency after the 2026 season as the only true ace on the market. He won back-to-back AL Cy Young Awards in 2024 and 2025, becoming the first AL pitcher since Pedro Martinez to go back-to-back. Then he spent 2026 proving the injury scare did not touch him.
The Numbers Still Play
He had surgery in early May to remove loose bodies from his left elbow, a procedure that usually costs a pitcher two to three months. He was back in six weeks.
Across both teams in 2026 he went 12-7 with a 2.72 ERA, 186 strikeouts and a 0.964 WHIP in 158.2 innings over 26 starts. With Detroit he posted a 2.79 ERA and 116 strikeouts in 96.2 innings. After the trade to Los Angeles he was even sharper: 5-2 with a 2.61 ERA in 10 starts and 62 innings.
He also reached 1,000 career strikeouts on July 29, getting there in 857 innings, faster than any pitcher in Tigers franchise history. The elbow is fine and the stuff is intact. The market is going to reflect both.
The Dodgers Rented Him. Now They Have To Pay Him.
Detroit traded Skubal to Los Angeles on August 2 for outfielder Zyhir Hope, right-hander River Ryan and right-hander Brady Smith. The Tigers chose a prospect package over a compensation pick, which was defensible, but it is a thin return for a two-time reigning Cy Young winner and it will look worse if Skubal keeps pitching like this in October.
The Dodgers finished 100-62 and earned a first-round bye as the NL’s No. 2 seed behind Milwaukee’s 103-59. They acquired Skubal for exactly this month, and now they have to decide whether to keep him at a price nobody has paid a pitcher before.
Jim Bowden of The Athletic laid out the projection in early September: Skubal should become the highest-paid pitcher in the sport by average annual value, clearing $36 million a year and potentially approaching $400 million in total value. That would blow past Gerrit Cole’s $324 million and Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s $325 million.
“Assuming he remains healthy, there’s no doubt that he’ll soon become the highest paid pitcher based on the average annual value,” Bowden said.
Pay The Man
Here is the stance: the Dodgers should hand him the $400 million and not blink. Only a handful of clubs can even enter this auction, and Los Angeles has already absorbed the acquisition cost in prospects. Walking away now means they paid a real price for two months of rental and then let a 30-year-old two-time Cy Young winner sign somewhere else.
The Mets are the obvious lurking threat, and they have every reason to spend aggressively after a season that went sideways. Any big-market club with rotation questions will make a call.
Ten-year deals for pitchers usually age badly, and the back half of this contract will almost certainly be dead weight. That is the cost of doing business at the top of the market. Skubal is the best starting pitcher available, he proved his elbow works, and somebody is going to make him the richest arm in baseball history. It should be the team that already gave up three prospects to get him.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.