Dodgers Trading for Skubal: Analyzing MLB's Latest Moves

I thought that Tarik Scuba would be traded to the Dodgers from the Tigers Monday at 5.59 p.m., somewhere along those lines, but I don't know if I'm wrong. I guess here's what I would ask, Tom, because it seems to me that this was the best that the Dodgers were going to give up and the best that the Tigers could get. They got three prospects back in return, Zaheer Hope, Brady Smith, and River Ryan seems to me looks pretty familiar to a lot of the other deals the Dodgers have made in the past, like Manny Machado and Max Scherzer. The Dodgers give up probably a little bit more than other teams were willing to give up, but that's my take this morning, Tom, is that I wonder how this happened on Saturday night as opposed to the Dodgers literally waiting this out like an auction until Monday. I guess the sense I get, Tom, is that this was going to be the very best offer, and I know that's getting a lot of fans in Tampa and Milwaukee upset today asking themselves, how could we not give up more than this? But the truth is, Tom, we really don't know what prospects are, right? At the end of the day, we have no idea who's going to be what. Right, and there's a thousand thoughts going on when it comes to this deal. The verbiage that we heard from the Tigers earlier in the season is they want impact players or high-level prospects. There's a thought saying, how could other teams not exceed this? It's not the Dodgers' fault or the Tigers' fault that another team, the Brewers, the Braves, can step in and give them three or four prospects or five prospects that are higher level and higher rated, et cetera, et cetera. We're really getting a picture of River Ryan, who has four MLB games under his belt with 20 innings pitched. We don't know if he's good or bad. It's just too small the sample size. We have Zaire Hope, who's in double A, who's not going to make an impact for two or three seasons. And then we have Brady Smith, who's in high A, who's legitimately not going to make an impact for, at best, four seasons. So we're talking about a very boring-ish trade, in my opinion, because I wanted to see a team go out and make an offer that could compete with the Dodgers and also put them alongside to potentially beat the Dodgers. That's what I kept saying about the Brewers, the Braves, the Phillies. They needed to make a roster not just good enough to win a division. You've got to make a roster that's good enough to beat the Dodgers. So Scuba goes to the Dodgers. Their rotation looks amazing. He's been amazing this year even after the elbow surgery. He came back. He's looked great. Really hasn't missed a beat. He could have been on his way to a third straight AL Cy Young if he hadn't missed that much time. Their rotation looks great as of now. It comes down to how they utilize not just him but the rest of the rotation to close out the season. And then they have Yamamoto, Scuba, and as a one-two going into any playoff series. We don't know if Otani is going to pitch to end the season or if he'll just come back and be ready for October. We know that Snell and Glassnell are on their way back. They're mixing in Robleski and Eric Lauer, who have been pretty darn good. And it's a great rotation. And they look like they're the favorites and they should be the favorites to win the World Series for a third straight year. It's that simple. But it's also unfun from a fan perspective. I wanted to see him go to another team and say, we're taking our best swing to beat the Dodgers right now. Yeah, look, there's a lot of thoughts today. And I understand that the looming CBA is part of this conversation. Are there some outlined stuff with this conversation? Yeah, I mean, I think that's fair to say. But look, in the end, Scuba's only making a few million dollars for the rest of the season. Tom, we'll talk to Kevin Walsh about this. But for me, it maybe drives the point home of the disparity of the payroll system, which is that when the Dodgers' payroll is 300 million more than the teams that they're in contention with, you can't look at those teams and expect them to give up a lot more than the Dodgers would to make a trade, because those are players they're going to have to have play for them, especially if it's, look, no guy is a guarantee. But Milwaukee and Tampa Bay, they were floating their top prospect each. And they're probably saying to themselves, wait a second, if we give this guy up, we're helping the Dodgers actually in this scenario get better in the future, because they could just take whoever they want and keep going, and we can't. So from that perspective, I understand that I'm with you a little bit. I'm disappointed, obviously, that some other team is not going to go against it.