Did MLB's Labor Situation Make Tarik Skubal More Attractive to Dodgers?
Newsweek · C · trust 37/100
0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. With a lockout looming over Major League Baseball , the Dodgers might have had even more incentive to acquire the game's most talented pending free agent.
Tarik Skubal was coincidentally available in the days leading up to the Aug. 3 deadline, after which teams cannot trade players off their 40-man roster.
Skubal, the two-time defending American League Cy Young Award winner, likely wasn't going anywhere with the Detroit Tigers, who are 54-58. Instead, he went to Los Angeles, where he will try to help the Dodgers win a third consecutive World Series. The Dodgers traded prospects Zyhir Hope, River Ryan and Brady Smith to Detroit for two months of Skubal.
Skubal is unlikely to negotiate a contract extension in-season. His agent, Scott Boras, typically prefers to take his clients to free agency. But at least one retired MLB pitcher believes the labor situation could have — or should have — influenced the industry's thinking about acquiring Skubal.
"This is what people don’t understand," Ziegler wrote on Twitter/X. "Skubal being on the Dodgers roster right now gives him an opportunity to sign an extension before the end of the season…thus, potentially grandfathering his new contract into any future CBA. If he was on another team’s roster, there’s at least a chance that any future contract would’ve had to go through rules of the new CBA.
"That’s why another team should’ve outbid the Dodgers with prospects, even if it was just for the remainder of this season (and playoffs). Win now."
Ziegler is hardly alone in his belief that the Dodgers could have, if not should have, been outbid by another team for Skubal. The Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays had the prospect capital to get a deal done and have never won a World Series in their history. Even a columnist for the Los Angeles Times admonished the Brewers for not getting a Skubal trade done .
But those bullet points were offered in service of the argument for winning the 2026 World Series. Ziegler believes the entire league should have been playing defense against the Dodgers' ability to sign Skubal for the 2027 season and beyond.
There's no telling what the next collective bargaining agreement holds, only that it will look different than the one that expires on Dec. 1.
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