{"id":421827,"date":"2026-08-02T16:09:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T16:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/421827\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T16:09:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T16:09:13","slug":"dodgers-tigers-trade-grades-los-angeles-gets-an-a-for-skubal-detroit-earns-high-marks-for-prospect-haul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/421827\/","title":{"rendered":"Dodgers-Tigers trade grades: Los Angeles gets an A for Skubal, Detroit earns high marks for prospect haul"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Athletic has live coverage of the 2026 MLB Trade Deadline<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dodgers get: LHP Tarik Skubal
Tigers get: OF Zyhir Hope, RHP River Ryan and RHP Brady Smith<\/p>\n

Dodgers: A+
Tigers: B<\/p>\n

If Skubal wants to return to Detroit to stuff his belongings into cardboard boxes and then hop in an RV and haul across the country to get to Southern California \u2014 maybe he stops to visit the Rocky Mountains or the Grand Canyon, maybe he spends a night or two playing baccarat in Las Vegas \u2014 he can take his time with his arrival. The Dodgers don\u2019t need him for August or September. This, obviously, is about the handful of starts he could make in October, when the Dodgers will again attempt to leverage their embarrassment of riches into a title.<\/p>\n

L.A. has built a deep, talented farm system. That\u2019s what allows them to pull off a deal like this (and, sure, it helps that they can backfill any hint of a deficiency in free agency, as they do every winter). But they\u2019ll cruise into the postseason \u2014 health provided, of course \u2014 with Skubal, a reigning two-time Cy Young Award winner; Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who has pitched like an ace; Shohei Ohtani, you might be familiar with his work; Blake Snell, another two-time Cy Young Award winner; and, if they get desperate, All-Star Justin Wrobleski is enjoying a breakout campaign and Tyler Glasnow features ace-like stuff when available. This is like when you see a delivery truck back into the driveway of that neighbor who has everything. \u201cOh, now they\u2019re getting a second stone pizza oven for their patio?!\u201d<\/p>\n

Zyhir Hope could blossom into a star outfielder. And so could Eduardo Quintero, Mike Sirota, Josue De Paula, James Tibbs III and Charles Davalan \u2014 five other Dodgers outfield prospects who all cracked Keith Law\u2019s recent top-70 prospects list<\/a>\u00a0(Law has a complete analysis of the prospects involved<\/a> here). For the Tigers, a timid offseason and a sluggish first couple of months doomed them and made this feel inevitable. In the wide-open American League, maybe they can still hang around. \u2014 Zack Meisel<\/p>\n

Andy McCullough helps you process the Skubal trade<\/p>\n

Andy McCullough<\/p>\n

Dodgers: A+
Tigers: A<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s not belabor the Dodgers\u2019 side of this: The reigning back-to-back World Series champs just acquired the reigning back-to-back AL Cy Young Award winner without parting with any of their top three prospects.<\/p>\n

Full stop.<\/p>\n

Why not make this move? If it succeeds, you\u2019re legends. If it fails, you go to bed after that last October loss knowing you couldn\u2019t possibly have done more in pursuit of a three-peat. And you can still throw a bunch of money at Skubal in free agency to keep him in Dodger blue.<\/p>\n

I come from a long line of Tigers fans. This has been a torturous season for my people. My dad texted the other day asking for my gut feel on whether Skubal would be traded. The gist of my response was this: \u201cI think the value the Tigers are going to be offered for Skubal will be so high that they\u2019ll believe they\u2019re doing significant damage to next year\u2019s team if they turn it down.\u201d That\u2019s what happened here. The reason these trade talks didn\u2019t drag into Sunday was that it became clear that the team with the most to offer was willing to offer the most. Assuming Jes\u00fas Made (Brewers), Theo Gillen (Rays) and the Dodgers\u2019 top three prospects were off the table, two top-50 prospects is a good get. There just aren\u2019t other teams willing to top that, especially for a rental.<\/p>\n

Keith Law recently ranked Hope as the No. 26 prospect in the sport, with Ryan close behind at No. 41. With outfielder Max Clark (No. 13) \u2014 who hit his first MLB homer shortly before news of the trade broke Saturday night \u2014 and shortstop Bryce Rainer (No. 35) already in the fold, the Tigers now have four of Law\u2019s top-50 prospects<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Tigers are, at least in theory, still in the hunt this season. That\u2019s still the case. Even without Skubal. Even without Casey Mize, assuming he\u2019s traded. This move was made with next year (and the year after that, and the year after that \u2026) in mind. Two months of Skubal for all of this? Yet it leaves the Tigers in a position to have at least a puncher\u2019s chance at a wild-card spot. That seems to be the needle their front office was trying to thread in a Skubal deal. \u2014 Stephen J. Nesbitt<\/p>\n

Dodgers: A
Tigers: B-<\/p>\n

As inevitable as the Dodgers feel in the moment, it\u2019s important to remember how close they\u2019ve come to elimination in each of the past two postseasons. They needed to win a bullpen game to get past the Padres in the 2024 NLDS, and they needed Yoshinobu Yamamoto to submit a historic performance (and, you know, a pretty memorable home run and some clutch defense) to come back and seize last year\u2019s World Series from the Blue Jays.<\/p>\n

And in 2025, that was with the full complement of their rotation healthy. Yes, L.A. can slow-play it with Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow and Shohei Ohtani all regular season to give those guys the best chance to be healthy when it matters in October. But they still might not be. And rather than upgrading their biggest right-now need with a right-handed backup infielder to help Tommy Edman at second base, the Dodgers filled their biggest plausible October need.<\/p>\n

Nine days ago, I suggested the return for Skubal would likely look like Detroit\u2019s for David Price in 2015: a headlining top-25 or top-50 prospect, a valuable second piece at or close to the big leagues, and a lower-level flier. That\u2019s Hope, Ryan and Smith, in that order, with Ryan a much more tantalizing second piece than Matthew Boyd was 11 years ago.<\/p>\n

How you ultimately feel about the deal probably comes down to your take on Ryan \u2014 whether he\u2019s an ace-in-waiting or an oft-injured tease. (Those two categories can overlap so tightly.) If you look at Ryan\u2019s stuff and see someone capable of stepping into Skubal\u2019s place in the rotation right now and the top half of that group in 2027 for Detroit, this is an \u201cA\u201d return. If you\u2019re concerned that he has 212 2\/3 professional innings to his name and is two months older than Juan Soto, you might be a bit lower. Because he spent all of 2025 on the major-league injured list, Ryan has just four big-league starts and well over a year of service time, meaning there\u2019s less team control than for the standard pitching prospect. Pitchers can put it all together late, but that\u2019s the main issue that has me docking Detroit\u2019s return. \u2014 Tim Britton<\/p>\n

The Athletic\u00a0has live coverage of the\u00a02026 MLB Trade Deadline<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Athletic has live coverage of the 2026 MLB Trade Deadline.\u00a0 Dodgers get: LHP Tarik SkubalTigers get: OF…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1496,48,52,51,47,53,50,49,1334],"class_list":["post-421827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-detroit-tigers","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-mlb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}