Cory McKee

[🇺🇸 🦅Detroit Dutch™ SSgt USMC (Ret.) 🇺🇸 🪂 @DetDutch]

The Skubal Trade-

The Detroit Tigers traded the best pitcher in baseball in the seventh inning of a Saturday night game in West Sacramento, and I am not going to spend my time yelling at Scott Harris and Chris Ilitch about it.

Tarik Skubal never wanted to be in Detroit. Not last week, not last winter, not two years ago. We've known that for two years because people around him told people or subconsciously posted on social media about it — the people he talks to every day, the ones who have no reason to spin it. He wanted to go west. Los Angeles, Seattle, Arizona, it did not matter much which one. Detroit was the place he pitched, not the place he wanted to be.

Scott Harris on 97.1 The Ticket said the Tigers could not simply decide to sign the man — that it takes two parties who both actually want a deal. That is a general manager telling the city, as politely as he can, that the other side was never coming to the table.

Scott Boras spent the offseason saying the same thing louder and less politely. Jon Heyman said it out loud in June. Everybody who wanted to believe the press-conference version believed the press-conference version anyway.

What a guy says into a microphone does not matter. Watch what he does. He withheld an arm injury from the organization heading into an arbitration case. He took himself out of a playoff game in Seattle. Judge that however you want, but do not tell me it adds up to a man who was fighting to stay.

I have said it before: Skubal is the Kevin Durant of Major League Baseball. You can win a championship with him. You are not going to win one because of him. Two Cy Youngs and I still never watched him take the ball and think this is the guy who drags a franchise somewhere.

Justin Verlander was that. Matthew Stafford was that, and Stafford never won a thing here. Those men left everything on the field for a city that gave them nothing back. That is a Detroit athlete. Skubal was a great pitcher who worked here.

So Detroit got Zyhir Hope, River Ryan and Brady Smith. Hope is the headline — 21 years old, hitting .293 with 23 home runs and 18 steals at Double-A Tulsa, a top-25 prospect on MLB Pipeline’s list and top-55 on Baseball America’s. Left-handed power, real speed, real swing-and-miss. Ryan is 27 and sitting on the Triple-A injured list with a strained hamstring. When he was healthy in 2024 he made four big league starts and gave up three runs. Health is the entire question. Smith is a 21-year-old lottery ticket with stuff worth betting on.

That is a fair return for a rental headed into a lockout nobody can price. It is not what you get for a two-time Cy Young winner, and it never was going to be, because everyone in the sport knew Detroit had no leverage. Which is exactly why he should have been traded last offseason. Or the one before.

And then there is the part almost nobody wrote about. On the same night the organization traded its past and its present, Kevin McGonigle led off with an opposite-field home run and Max Clark hit his first career homer in the fifth. Two 21-year-olds going deep in the same game. McGonigle finished with three hits. The Tigers won 8-6.

That is the whole story, and it happened in one night. This was not a World Series team in 2026 with Skubal or without him — the bullpen has been the problem since April, and it still is. But McGonigle, Clark, Dingler, Keith, Troy Melton, Jackson Jobe when he is right. That is a team worth watching on the other side of a work stoppage.

The deadline is Monday at 6 p.m. Eastern. Casey Mize, Gleyber Torres and Kenley Jansen could all still move, and it would all be fine by me. The future of this organization matters more than the last two months of a contract that was never getting signed.

Skubal is a Dodger. Good. They are going for a Three Peat and willing to pay 1/2 Million Bucks for a pitcher that will only net them 2-3 months at best. The Dodgers don't care they are billions of dollars in debt and have declared bankruptcy once (2011) and looks like it's win the World Series or bust.

The league will probably be locked out next year with salary caps on the table. Play baseball for the next 3 months (if you get lucky and make it into the playoffs) and then it will be over. The Boston Red Sox completed a stunning three-game series sweep against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium.

[CreighTakes @CreighTakes]

🚨Former Creighton Guard and Council Bluffs native Josh Dix has signed a two-way contract with the OKC Thunder.

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