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There was no doubt the Detroit Tigers were going to lose Tarik Skubal.
Several teams had shown interest in the two-time American League Cy Young Award winner, including the Milwaukee Brewers and the New York Yankees.
Despite this, Skubal’s exuberance to join the already robotically perfect Dodgers is, to many, infuriating. With an endless war chest of cash at their disposal, the Dodgers are assembling a Deathstar of athletic ability, seemingly just because they can. At the start of the 2026 season, they had a $323.3 million payroll; add to that a $163.7 million tax, and the World Champions were spending nearly half a billion dollars to field a roster in 2026. To put it into another context: The Dodgers are spending more in just one season than it cost to make Avengers: Endgame ($356-$400 million).
Underlying the highly publicized trade is the ongoing battle over a salary cap in the MLB. The league is embroiled in an increasingly bitter feud between players and owners, as they try to reach an agreement before the five-year labor contract expires Dec. 1. If the negotiating parties do not reach an agreement before December, it’s possible a lockout could follow, potentially pushing the first games of the season back if the labor dispute carries on, or worse, the cancellation of the 2027 season.
MLB’s newest proposal would limit overall team payrolls to $245.3 million, while also establishing a minimum payroll of $171.2 million. This new proposal, which was announced July 31, comes in the wake of a swathe of players vehemently arguing against a salary cap. It also arrived just a handful of days before the Aug. 2 announcement that Skubal would be leaving Motor City for the City of Angels.
High-paid stars including Juan Soto, Paul Skenes, and Bryce Harper are among the many players browbeating a salary cap proposal. Soto, who is in year two of a record-breaking $756 million 15-year contract with the New York Mets, is among the most drastic examples of players who would lose millions per year should a salary cap in its current form be implemented.
Although players would, at least according to MLB, make more money overall under the proposed deal from MLB (they would share a guaranteed flat 50 percent share in League-wide revenue), the losses felt by a vast majority of the ticket-selling players are hard to swallow.
There is almost no doubt at this point that many small market teams, and even some big market teams, will be clamoring for a salary cap as Dec. 1 nears. The Dodgers face the brunt of the criticism for the mounting pressure, but other teams, such as the Yankees and Mets, also spend well over the MLB’s proposed $245.3 million limit with less wins to their names. Additionally, teams spending under the proposed limit have kept the bloated leviathan that is the current Dodgers team from a perfect season; the Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays each spend under the proposed salary minimum and also each have at least 70 wins this season.
So yes, there was no doubt Skubal would leave Detroit, and it was never a question of if he would end up at a big market team with the potential to dump a wheelbarrow of cash on his front lawn come his free agency. His $32 million one-year contract he signed with the Tigers (the Dodgers will pay out his remaining $9.6 million for the rest of the season before he enters free agency). If the Dodgers want to keep Skubal in their already stacked pitching lineup, they will have to fork out a canyon-sized deposit of cash—something they’ve already proven they’re capable of.
It’s good business for the Dodgers. It’s a great opportunity for Skubal. But only time will tell if this trade will be remembered is a marker for a bygone era in Major League Baseball.
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