The Los Angeles Dodgers acquired left-hander Tarik Skubal from the Detroit Tigers, sending outfielder Zyhir Hope and right-handers River Ryan and Brady Smith to Detroit. ESPN reported the agreement late Saturday night, August 1; the Dodgers confirmed it Sunday morning, August 2, a day and a half before Monday's 6 p.m. ET deadline. Skubal is scheduled to make his Dodgers debut Tuesday against the Cubs at Wrigley Field.
What Los Angeles is getting
Skubal is the reigning two-time American League Cy Young Award winner, the first pitcher to go back-to-back in the league since Pedro Martínez in 1999 and 2000. He is 7-5 this season with a 2.79 ERA, a 0.91 WHIP, and 116 strikeouts against 14 walks in 96⅔ innings across 16 starts. His July ERA was 2.03. On July 24 he struck out 12 Royals over 7⅓ innings.
The innings total is low for August because he missed roughly six weeks. Skubal was sidelined in May to have loose bodies — bone chips — removed from his pitching elbow, a class of surgery FanGraphs said can run a two-to-three-month recovery, while cautioning that "setting a return date now isn't feasible given how broad of a range of injuries 'loose body removal' covers." He was back on a major league mound 38 days after the operation. The reason the gap closed that fast is the procedure itself: Skubal had what ESPN called a less-invasive, revolutionary NanoScope procedure, a needle-sized scope and camera used to clear out the loose bodies, per Yahoo Sports.
He arrives on the last stretch of a contract, not a long-term deal. Skubal won his arbitration case in February for $32 million, and the Dodgers take on what remains of that figure. He becomes a free agent at the end of the season, which makes this a two-month rental of the reigning Cy Young winner and, by Yahoo's accounting, the first time a team has carried a reigning two-time MVP and a reigning two-time Cy Young winner in the same season — Shohei Ohtani and Skubal.
He joins a rotation that already includes Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Ohtani. Los Angeles entered the deadline with the highest run differential in the majors and the second-best record in baseball, chasing a third consecutive World Series title after opening the season as the three-peat favorite.
"I'm excited to be a Dodger. I'm excited to get down there and meet all those guys and chase three championships in a row. It's hard to do, so I'm excited to be a part of that."
— Tarik Skubal, via MLB.com
What Detroit is getting
The Tigers took the return in young talent rather than salary relief. Zyhir Hope is the headliner: an outfielder ranked fifth in the Dodgers system and 25th overall on MLB Pipeline's Top 100, hitting .293/.369/.530 with 23 home runs and 87 RBIs in Double-A. River Ryan, the No. 7 prospect in the system and No. 68 overall, posted a 1.33 ERA in four major league starts in 2024, then missed all of 2025 after Tommy John surgery and has been slowed by hamstring trouble this year. Brady Smith, a 2023 third-round pick and the system's No. 17 prospect, has 113 strikeouts and 30 walks with a 4.36 ERA in 74⅓ innings.
Detroit sold from seven games below .500, six games out of first place and three out of a wild-card spot, with Skubal three months from leaving for nothing. Dealing him is the first in-season trade of a reigning Cy Young winner since the Mets sent Justin Verlander to Houston in 2023.
"There just aren't that many star-level players in the game, and any time one is available, we're always going to participate in those conversations. We've traded a lot of really talented young players, but we're able to be in those conversations because of the incredible work by our scouts, our front office and our player development group that has our farm system in such a strong spot to be able to talk to any team basically about any player."
— Andrew Friedman, Dodgers president of baseball operations, via MLB.com
The Cubs, Braves, Brewers, Yankees and Rays were all in on Skubal, per ESPN, which reported that rival executives had long seen Los Angeles as the favorite. Two weeks before the deadline, ESPN's candidate board put Skubal at 60% to be dealt. The trade led the sports section of Monday's roundup, and the rest of the deadline closes Monday at 6 p.m. ET — with the Dodgers in Chicago to open a series against the Cubs on deadline day, one night before Skubal pitches for them.
Boston made its own move at catcher the same day, acquiring Adley Rutschman from the Orioles.
In the National League, Philadelphia acquired Luis Arraez from the Giants before the same deadline.
Elsewhere in the same season, the White Sox retired Ozzie Guillén's No. 13 on August 8, the first manager in franchise history to be honored that way.
Source: MLB.com
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