Tarik Skubal’s latest comments about a possible return to Detroit have done little to calm Tigers fans who already feel burned by the whole situation.
On the Pardon My Take podcast, Skubal said he "hopes those negotiations can pick back up in November. [...]
Hopefully they're involved with everything. I would love to return."
That sounds polite enough on the surface. But for a lot of Tigers fans, it landed as empty talk after everything that has happened since the trade deadline.
The reaction has been sharpened by the way Skubal has handled the split. He got emotional while discussing leaving his teammates in Detroit, then quickly started praising Los Angeles once he arrived. Tigers fans have been frustrated by reports that he made no real effort to negotiate an extension, while Dodgers fans have grown tired of hearing him talk about the Tigers.
The timing hasn’t helped him either. Detroit fans have been enjoying the Dodgers’ collapse, with Los Angeles losing its seventh straight game on Friday night after Ryan Waldschmidt hit a walk-off two-run homer off Edwin Díaz.
That’s only the second time the Dodgers have dropped seven in a row in their last nine seasons. Skubal was on the mound for his Dodgers debut in that game, too.
Meanwhile, the Tigers are sitting just two games out of a Wild Card spot and own the third-best run differential in the American League.
Still, there is some reality behind the anger directed at Skubal. He sits on the MLB Players Association's executive subcommittee and is widely expected to help set the market, especially with a lockout looming.
A contract extension was always going to be a long shot unless Detroit was willing to go all the way to the kind of money Skubal is projected to command in free agency - around $400 million. The Tigers were never going to do that.
But even if that outcome was predictable, it doesn’t make his latest comments sit any better with the fan base. Scott Harris and the front office were never likely to chase that kind of deal, and Harris has already said he didn't believe in a Skubal window. Detroit now has Troy Melton’s rise, Jackson Jobe’s return, and Cameron Flukey’s addition to the farm system as reasons to move on.
For plenty of Tigers fans, that’s the bottom line: Skubal is gone, and they’d rather he stop talking like a comeback is still on the table.
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