What should the Detroit Tigers do with ace pitcher Tarik Skubal as he enters his last year of team control in 2026? Longtime Tigers radio announcer Dan Dickerson has an answer.
Skubal has been the main subject of offseason discussions surrounding the Tigers as the 2025 American League Cy Young favorite approaches a critical season in Detroit. The Tigers have exclusive negotiating rights with their lefty ace until the end of the 2026 season, but Skubal becomes a free agent if the Tigers don’t sign him to a contract before then.
That has essentially given the Tigers three options — keep Skubal, trade him or sign him to a long-term extension that could end up the richest deal ever awarded to an MLB pitcher.
And considering the Tigers and Skubal have a reported $250 million gap in contract negotiations, many fans have become increasingly pessimistic that Skubal will sign that long-term deal to stay in Detroit.
In fact, when we ran a poll last month asking what the Tigers should do with Skubal, over 61% of respondents said Detroit should trade their pitcher, with just 26% saying the team should keep him through 2026. But according to Dickerson, that second option is the better one for the Tigers.
In an appearance on the Free Press’ Days of Roar podcast with our Tigers insider Evan Petzold recorded Tuesday, Oct. 28, Dickerson said that a Tigers team with serious World Series aspirations in 2026 would be smarter to keep Skubal rather than trade him.
“You wanna win a World Series in 2026? You keep Tarik Skubal, you build around him,” he said. “You’ve got young talent coming, as you said, and then you try to re-sign him.”
Dickerson acknowledged that a Skubal extension will require a lot of money, something that many fans don’t think Detroit will be willing to spend. But he doesn’t necessarily see that as an impediment to Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris convincing Skubal to stay in Detroit.
“This is what the good executives do: What’s the number that he needs to get to? Figure out that number, figure out creative ways that you can get to that number,” he said, offering deferred money as a way to make a competitive offer while deflating the contract’s value.
As for trading Skubal, that is something Dickerson is absolutely not on board with.
“You’re not going to get any kind of a package to me that’s going to justify trading (Skubal),” he said, referencing the Tigers 2017 trade of Justin Verlander that got them pitcher Franklin Pérez, outfielder Daz Cameron and catcher Jake Rogers as a cautionary tale.
Those three players, by the way, have combined to put up 1.6 bWAR for the Tigers since the trade (Rogers 2.4 WAR in 328 games, Cameron -0.8 WAR in 73 games and Pérez yet to make his MLB debut).
Even though Dickerson seemed steadfast in his opinion, he was much less certain about how the situation with the Tigers and Skubal would actually play out.
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