The Detroit Tigers have heard plenty of noise about Tarik Skubal and the trade deadline, but the case for moving him gets awfully shaky when you pull up the franchise’s own history.
A recent look by The Athletic at past deadline returns used David Price as the comparison for Skubal, and that alone should make Tigers fans pause. If the idea is that a haul of prospects is supposed to justify shipping out an ace, Detroit has already lived through a version of that experiment.
In 2015, the Blue Jays sent Daniel Norris, Matthew Boyd and Jairo Labourt to the Tigers for Price, and the return never came close to changing the club’s direction. As Tim Britton noted, "Norris was the big get as a top-25 prospect in the sport," Britton wrote. "Boyd had just made his debut as a potential back-end starter, and Labourt had made the Futures Game despite pedestrian on-field results."
Labourt’s Tigers run amounted to six forgettable games. Norris posted a 4.52 ERA and 6.5 WAR over eight seasons in Detroit. Boyd had a stretch where he looked like a league-average starter, but he finished his Tigers career with a 4.61 ERA.
That’s the problem with these deals. The player coming back in the majors is usually the one who matters most.
Prospects come wrapped in hope, but most of the time the package is more ordinary than advertised. The dream is landing the next Kevin McGonigle.
The more common outcome is something closer to Daz Cameron and Franklin Perez.
Detroit got Cameron, Perez and Jake Rogers in the Justin Verlander deal. Cameron finished with -0.8 WAR in a Tigers uniform, Perez never reached the majors, and while Rogers is a useful player, it hardly turns the trade into a clear win for Detroit.
The same fog hangs over other deadline hauls. Who remembers what the Tigers got for Ian Kinsler, J.D.
Martinez or Justin Upton? Not much of anyone, and that says plenty.
More recently, Scott Harris dealt Jack Flaherty for Trey Sweeney, who has -0.1 WAR, and Thayron Liranzo, who has not gotten past Double-A. That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the idea that a Skubal trade would suddenly solve everything.
None of this means every deal of a star for prospects fails. Some work out.
Plenty do not. That’s why the argument that Detroit would be making some franchise-wrecking mistake by keeping Skubal feels overstated.
He would be a two-month rental, and the return on that kind of move is not some guaranteed franchise reset. If he leaves after the season, the Tigers can still get a draft pick.
So yes, the Price trade is a reminder that prospect packages can disappoint. But it does not prove the Tigers are cursed to repeat the same mistake, and it certainly does not prove that trading Skubal for a top-100 prospect is the safer path.
For nearly two months, since June 1, the Tigers have been tied for the best record in the American League and own the best run differential in baseball. Betting on that group and keeping Skubal looks like the cleaner, more believable play.
They might miss out on a flashy return. Odds are, they probably won’t miss much else.
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Roberts appeal is easy to see even with his season interrupted by injury. He has long handled left-handed pitching well, and that kind of split could matter for a Tigers lineup looking for any edge it can find in a tight race. The question is whether Detroit thinks the upside is worth the risk, especially with a player whose availability has been limited and whose market would come with plenty of uncertainty attached. [Read more 🡒]