Why Dodgers must trade for Tarik Skubal from Tigers before deadline

When the calendar officially turned over from July to August, the pressure on teams like the Los Angeles Dodgers to make a move before the 2026 MLB trade deadline kicked into overdrive.

With Monday, August 3 serving as the final day teams can swap MLB players, prospects, and draft picks before attention turns to playoff seeding, Andrew Friedman and company have a chance to cash in some of their farm system’s incredible bounty for a ready-made upgrade to the best roster in baseball.

Now granted, could the Dodgers opt to avoid making any monster splashes, instead opting to make a marginal upgrade or two like in 2025? Sure, Los Angeles has an incredible collection of talent already and will only get better as players like Edwin Diaz, Blake Snell, and Tyler Glasnow return to full strength.

But then again, after watching the difference between a World Series win and a crushing defeat come down to a few plays last October, do the Dodgers really want to add risk to their historic three-peat pursuit? Are they willing to trust that “Snellzilla” and Glasnow can stay healthy, or that young arms like Roki Sasaki, Justin Wrobleski, and Emmet Sheehan will be able to play lights-out baseball in the postseason, where games can occasionally surpass 18 innings?

No, with rumblings that the 2027 season could be in jeopardy and no guarantee that the market shake out in such an adventagous way next year, the Dodgers should do what oh so many pundits, fans, and former players alike have suggested and make a trade for Tarik Skubal, forming a true Evil Empire capible of running wild through the National League on the way to another World Series appearance, if for no other reason than to keep him away from other contenders like the Milwaukee Brewers.

The Dodgers might as well go all-in on the three-peat with Tarik Skubal

Unfortunately for Los Angeles, they most likely won’t have a pitcher win the Cy Young this year.

After becoming a certified legend in the World Series last year, Yoshinobu Yamamoto has remained one of the better pitchers in baseball, not to mention the unquestioned ace of the Dodgers’ rotation, but his 2.72 ERA isn’t even the best mark on the team. No, that honor belongs to Shohei Ohtani, who was unofficially on the Cy Young warpath all season with some of the best pitching of his career but unfortunately, after earning a 1.79 ERA over 85.2 innings, the regularity of his spot in Dave Roberts’ rotation has come into question as of late, with injuries to his knee and bicept holding him to just 14 starts vs. 19 for Yamamoto, Sasaki, and Sheehan.

Fortunately, even if the Dodgers don’t add another NL Cy Young winner ot their impressive history in 2026, they can bring over the reigning AL winner from the Detroit Tigers, as in the opinion of USA Today’s Bob Nightengale, there’s a 99 percent chance he’s on the move before the deadline.

Standing 6-foot-3, 240 pounds, Skubal looks like he was designed in a lab to be a modern-day MLB ace. He throws a heater that can reach a few mph above 100, has multiple off-speed pitches that can give opposing pitchers fits, and is a south paw, giving the Dodgers an impressive three in their potential playoff rotation alongside Snell and Wrobleski.

And the best part? Because he’s on an expiring contract, the Tigers appear willing to move him now after their chances of a World Series run crumbled over the last four months.

While it’s impossible to know what goes on behind closed doors, the consensus appears to be that, to acquire Skubal, the Dodgers would need to surrender a current rotation player, widely accepted to be Sheehan, plus one of their better outfield prospects like Zyhir Hope, and a low-level prospect in A-level ball to serve as a lottery ticket for the future. While that is a solid sum by any metric, as Hope has long looked like a potential everyday outfielder on one of the corners, Skubal is the kind of player who can borderline win a game on his own, even if the Tigers have looked to test that theory by losing games 9-10 where he allowed just three runs through 6.2.

Will opposing fans gripe with the fact that the best team in baseball just got arguably the best pitcher in baseball? Most certainly, with some using it as a reason to enforce a strict cap. And yet, the Dodgers can make a move for a player like Skubal because they’ve done everything the right way, building through the draft and developing young players in their farm system that opposing teams want to build their programs around. If the Tigers are willing to make a deal, why shouldn’t the Dodgers go all-in on winning now to see if they can become the first team since Derek Jeter’s Yankees to win three World Series in a row? Considering Skubal is a favorite to sign with the Dodgers in free agency anyway, it’s not so much a win-now trade, but a sort of pre-agency with parade implications.

The post Why Dodgers must trade for Tarik Skubal from Tigers before deadline appeared first on ClutchPoints.