DETROIT – It’s no secret that rumors have been flying this offseason about what the Tigers should do with their ace Tarik Skubal -- lock him down, trade him now, trade him at the next trade deadline, or let him hit free agency.
Skubal won his second consecutive Cy Young award and turned 29 all in the span of the last 8 days. He finished his 2025 season with somehow even better numbers than his triple-crown winning 2024 season.
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| 2024 | 2025 | |
|---|---|---|
| Innings pitched | 192 | 195.1 |
| ERA | 2.39 | 2.21 |
| Strikeouts | 228 | 241 |
| K/BB (Strikeout-to-walk rate) | 6.51 | 7.30 |
Skubal had Tommy John surgery back in 2016 when he pitched for Seattle University and returned to pitching in 2018. In 2022, he was shut down for the season in August and had flexor tendon surgery.
Since then, he’s had a clean bill of health and been as much of a workhorse as baseball allows nowadays.
How much would a Skubal contract cost?
On average, teams are spending $8-10 million on each Win Above Replacement (WAR). Both Baseball Reference and FanGraphs use their own WAR calculations, but for this article I’m using FanGraphs’ calculations.
According to FanGraphs, in 2025, Skubal’s WAR was the highest it’s ever been - he was worth 6.6 more wins than a replacement level player.
FanGraphs can be rather conservative in their projections, but they have Skubal projected to be worth about 5.9 WAR in 2026.
This would mean, if Skubal is worth about 6 WAR (we’ll round up), he would be looking at a contract of approximately $40 million per year.
Rumor has it he and his agent, Scott Boras, are seeking somewhere around an 8-10-year contract, which is how we get to the $400 million ballpark.
It would be assumed that if the contract offered was shorter than the original ask, the AAV (average annual value, or a fancy way of saying how much a player is paid per year), would be higher, and there may be an opt-out sprinkled in somewhere.
Nothing has been confirmed or denied, of course, but all the numbers mentioned above have been thrown around the rumor mill.
Skubal himself sat down with Foul Territory earlier this week and was asked what he thinks about all the trade rumors flying around that involve him.
“It’s not like I want to be traded, so it is kind of like why am I in these conversations to begin with?” He asked.
He also added, “Even contract stuff - I don’t even know where they come up with these numbers, or that narrative. They create these narratives -- it’s part of the media job. I get it.”
It seems like the Tigers would be honing in on their window of opportunity to win a World Series after two back-to-back playoff appearances, a superstar like Skubal on their roster, and two of the top ten prospects in all of baseball possibly joining the major league roster this year.
The question is -- are they willing to pay the price it’ll take to lock down the best pitcher in baseball, and what will they choose to do if they’re not?