Detroit Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris blamed himself for putting the team in a position to trade generational ace Tarik Skubal but lauded the prospects he received from the Los Angeles Dodgers in exchange.
He also took exception to the notion that he should've waited until closer to the trade deadline to maximize Skubal's return.
"We came into this very well prepared," Harris said in a videoconference shortly after Monday's deadline. "We came into this with a firm idea of the type of deal that we wanted to ultimately land. And we had a deep understanding of what every organization had to offer.
"I think there is a unique dynamic with a player like Tarik Skubal. Markets at the deadline for the top players are just different than the rest of the market. So I understand the intuition that, 'Hey, you're supposed to wait until the very last second on a deal and then pull a trigger at the very last second to maximize a return.' That's not how markets for the top players work."
Harris praised outfield prospect Zyhir Hope for his combination of power and speed, his knack for putting together big league at-bats and his overall bat-to-ball skills. He identified River Ryan as a potential front-of-the-rotation starter, adding that he expects him to join the major league roster in September. And he described Brady Smith as a projectable starter with an elite changeup.
But the Dodgers have as many as four outfield prospects graded higher in their system than Hope, and the Tampa Bay Rays and Milwaukee Brewers, who were both deep in conversations for Skubal, possess some of the industry's deepest minor league systems. It prompted executives and scouts throughout the industry to wonder why Skubal, the reigning back-to-back American League Cy Young Award winner, didn't yield a bigger package -- or, at least, why this was the package that got the deal done a day and a half before the deadline.
"There wasn't any need to stretch it any further," Harris said. "The organizations that were involved were extremely aggressive, and they put in what I believe to be their max offers. And then they added to those offers also and got to the point of almost audible pain when they actually produced their best bold offers, and they gave it to us and we pulled the trigger. The notion that we should've waited 24 or 48 hours later and extracted more value -- that's garbage. That's not how these negotiations work."
The Tigers approached this season with expectations of winning the AL Central, but their roster was ravaged by injury early, prompting a 6-22 May that had them tied for the worst record in the major leagues. The Tigers then won 28 of their next 46 games, but then their momentum ran out.
They lost back-to-back games to the last-place Kansas City Royals on July 25 and 26, then dropped two of three to the Baltimore Orioles thereafter. It was after that series that Harris decided he would trade away veteran players, most notably Skubal.
Casey Mize, another starting pitcher approaching free agency, also left, going to the San Diego Padres in exchange for 2024 first-round pick Kash Mayfield.
Harris said that while he hates dealing away veteran players who can help the team win, it would've been "irresponsible" not to trade Skubal and Mize given their markets. He also took responsibility for the Tigers being in position to trade them in the first place.
"I wanted to give this team every opportunity to make a really compelling case that we shouldn't do this," he said. "We just didn't make that case. It's not on the players, it's not on the coaches. It's on me."
A late bloomer who lasted until the ninth round of the 2018 draft, Skubal emerged as one of the game's most talented pitchers in 2022 and 2023, and he took it to another level thereafter. From 2024 to 2025, Skubal went 31-10 with a 2.30 ERA and a whopping 469 strikeouts in 387⅓ innings. His 12.6 FanGraphs wins above replacement led all major league pitchers.
In 16 starts this year, Skubal boasts a 2.79 ERA while striking out 116 batters and issuing 14 walks in 96⅔ innings. The only thing that could stop him were bone chips that began to irritate his left elbow in late April. Skubal underwent a less-invasive, revolutionary NanoScope procedure and returned in about six weeks. His ERA in July was 2.03.
In three months, Skubal, represented by the industry's most powerful agent in Scott Boras, will enter free agency with the hope of signing the largest contract ever rewarded to a starting pitcher. Harris said the Tigers approached him about an extension at one point -- he would not specify when -- and it was made clear to him that Skubal wanted to be a free agent.
"Which is totally his right," Harris said, "and nobody should be upset about that. He has put himself in a position to be able to explore a market, and he decided that he wanted to do that and should not be criticized for it."
Harris was adamant that the Tigers are not waiving the white flag on this season. His team (54-58) is just 2½ games out of a playoff spot, albeit with five teams to jump, and recently called up top prospect Max Clark to play center field. Harris opted against trading second baseman Gleyber Torres and closer Kenley Jansen, both pending free agents, because, he said, the returns did not justify losing their impacts for the rest of this season.
But in the end, Harris believes the return on Skubal was too good to pass up.
For validation, he pointed to Chicago Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong and Philadelphia Phillies ace Zack Wheeler, both of whom were acquired for star players who were approaching free agency.
"There's a ton of impact to be had at these deals," Harris said, "and there's a real asymmetry between the buy side and the sell side, which contributes to this notion where when you're put in a position where you have to make these tough decisions, it would be irresponsible to not make those decisions.
"I'm not saying that the players that we got are gonna be PCA or Zack Wheeler, but when you have an opportunity to add impact talent and guys that have ceilings as high as the guys that we have, they have a real chance to impact the organization."
