Late on Saturday night, the trade that the larger baseball world was anticipating/dreading finally came to fruition as the Detroit Tigers traded two-time AL Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal to the Los Angeles Dodgers for three prospects.
The Los Angeles Dodgers are acquiring Tarik Skubal for outfielder Zyhir Hope, right-hander River Ryan and right-hander Brady Smith, sources tell ESPN.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) August 2, 2026
While this trade has sparked a flurry of takes on an unfair advantage the Dodgers have, or the owners’ willingness to let the Dodgers have what they want so they can facilitate a lockout, those conversations are best served for another time. For now, the most pressing matter is looking at why either team would do this deal and if the online chatter that the Dodgers gave away nothing is remotely true.
What are the Dodgers getting with Tarik Skubal?
I mean, this part is easy. Skubal is a two-time AL Cy Young Award winner who has come back from having a bone chip removed from his elbow and still pitched to a 2.87 ERA, 0.88 WHIP, and 34.1% strikeout rate in 53.1 innings. He gives the Dodgers another experienced starter to add to their rotation that has been tested by injuries this season. Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow are working their way back from elbow and back injuries, respectively, and should be healthy for the postseason, but it remains to be seen how much Shohei Ohtani will pitch with his knee issue.
The Dodgers rotation also has Emmet Sheehan, who is an analytical darling, but has a 4.95 ERA in 92.2 innings this season. His career-high in innings is 123.1 back in 2023, and he also missed the entire 2024 season after having elbow surgery, so the Dodgers may want to be careful with a pitcher who will most certainly exceed his career high in innings by the end of the season. The same goes for Justin Wrobleski, who has been a revelation for the Dodgers this season in his first year as a full-time MLB starting pitcher. Wrobleski’s career high in innings is 132 back in 2024, but he’s already at 112.2 innings right now. Roki Sasaki has also looked much better of late, but the 24-year-old has too inconsistent an MLB track record to be leaned on heavily during a World Series run. He’s also up to 99 innings so far this season, and his career high is 129 innings back in 2022 in Japan.
It seems foolish to say the Dodgers NEEDED Skubal. They didn’t really. However, there is a compelling case that the rotation they would have taken into the postseason without him would have been a volatile one. The Dodgers didn’t need to take that risk, and so they opted not to.
While there have been some reports that Skubal would like to sign with the Dodgers in the off-season, there is no financial incentive to being traded to the Dodgers before doing that. This isn’t the NBA where teams can offer their own players more money in certain free agent deals. However, it does give Skubal a chance to see the organization firsthand and perhaps feel bolstered by a World Series run to remain in Los Angeles on a new contract. It obviously also gives the Dodgers a head start in negotiating with Skubal and his agent Scott Boras, which can’t be ignored.
What are the Tigers getting with these prospects?
The most notable prospect traded for Skubal was right-hander River Ryan. I know people want to scoff that he isn’t a prospect because he’s 27 years old, but Ryan didn’t start pitching in professional baseball until he was 23 years old. He had two really strong seasons in the minors for the Dodgers and even made his MLB debut at age 25, pitching to a 1.33 ERA in 20.1 innings for the Dodgers. Unfortunately, Tommy John surgery wiped out his entire 2025 season. He was pitching well enough in spring training and early this season that he would have likely been in the rotation for many other MLB teams. Instead, he was in Triple-A for the Dodgers for 36.1 innings before a hamstring injury landed him on the injured list.
When the Dodgers put him on the injured list in June, they said the injury “was not overly serious,” but he has not yet gotten back on the mound, so we’ll see if he can make it into the Tigers’ rotation this season. However, he should be a lock to be near the top of the Tigers’ rotation next year with Jackson Jobe and Troy Melton. Ryan has an upper-90s fastball with a deep collection of plus secondaries, the best of which is a low-90s slider. He also has a sinker and cutter to give him three fastball variations, and a curve and changeup that he can mix in against lefties. His health remains a major question mark, but he has the ceiling of, at worst, a middle-of-the-rotation starting pitcher, and the Tigers have him under team control for four more years.
Outfielder Zyhir Hope was the bigger prospect in the deal, ranking 25th in all of baseball, according to MLB Pipeline. He’s just 21 years old and hitting .293 with 23 home runs and 18 steals in Double-A this year. He has some contact concerns, but he also has elite bat speed and incredible athletic tools. He has been making improvements in his swing decisions and not chasing outside of the zone as much. There is obviously some risk with a player like this because plate discipline changes can be hard to make, but if those gains do remain consistent for Hope, he could be a regular All-Star. He could also be a 25 home run hitter who hits .220 and strikes out too often. But it’s not a bad gamble for the Tigers to take for two months of Tarik Skubal.
Lastly, the Tigers also got right-hander Brady Smith, who was the 95th overall pick in the 2023 MLB Draft. He had Tommy John surgery right after being drafted and didn’t pitch in any affiliate games until last June. This year, he had a 3.38 ERA in 65 innings in Single-A with a 37.5% K% before being promoted. His first two starts at High-A were not great, but two starts is an incredibly small sample size. He has a mid-90s fastball with an elite changeup that will help him neutralize left-handed hitters. If his slider continues to take a step forward, he’s a potential back-of-the-rotation pitcher because his fastball will likely never be anything more than average.
Final Trade Takeaways
The larger hand-wringing about the Dodgers and the potential lockout is impacting how people view this trade. There is a chance that the Tigers could have gotten “safer” prospects from another organization (we don’t know what was offered). However, they did well to get two potential long-term difference-makers in Hope and Ryan. There’s admittedly a chance that neither one of them is healthy or disciplined enough to be a full-time MLB regular, but for a team that is not in a full rebuild, these close-to-the-majors gambles make sense for the Tigers to take. If one of them hits, it’s probably a fair trade for two months of Skubal in a season where the Tigers were not contending. If both of them hit, we may look back on this as a solid move for Detroit.
Read the full article here