The Dodgers, with Tarik Skubal now in the fold, become even more imposing, infuriating and inevitable

By Jake Mintz — In News — August 2, 2026

   ​The Dodgers don’t care about your feelings.Nor should they.Baseball’s unapologetic behemoth got even more imposing, infuriating and inevitable late Saturday night. Tarik Skubal, he of the back-to-back AL Cy Young awards, is now a Los Angeles Dodger. The rich, once again, have gotten richer.It’s a fascinating, anticlimactic conclusion to what had been one of the more debated deadline sweepstakes for quite some time. Skubal’s Detroit Tigers tossed fuel on the fire by failing to turn a disappointing season around. By the back end of last week, a trade appeared increasingly likely. And in the end, the game’s evil empire won the bidding for the game’s best hurler.As one team employee put it to me last week: “If Andrew [Friedman] wants Skubal, he’ll get Skubal.” Turns out, Los Angeles’ top baseball exec did indeed want the sport’s most effective pitcher.A great deal of virtual ink has been and will be spilled over Detroit’s seemingly underwhelming prospect return. Yes, it certainly feels like president of baseball operations Scott Harris could’ve gotten more for a game-changer such as Skubal. It’s quite difficult to label this a haul. River Ryan is almost 28 years old and rarely healthy. Evaluators don’t know what position Zyhir Hope will play or how his body will age. Brady Smith, despite interesting peripherals, just ran a 5.26 ERA in low-A. None of that trio is a sure thing.Modern baseball organizations, however, look at things through a value-based lens. Giving up three promising players with so much team control, volatility aside, for two months of anybody would make an analytical model shutter. The math says the Dodgers overpaid. Common sense says somebody else should have paid more. Milwaukee and Tampa Bay certainly could have but were reportedly unwilling to include their best prospects in the deal. The Rays, for instance, likely refused to part with outfielder Theo Gillen or catcher Caden Bodine. Milwaukee surely balked at giving up infielders Jesús Made or Luis Peña. Perhaps time proves that conservatism prudent, but right now, the Brewers’ and Rays’ approach looks downright passive.This is also where Los Angeles’ financial strength comes into play. For Milwaukee and Tampa Bay, those endearing small-market jokers moving on the margins, the players that might have gotten a deal done are too crucial to the overall operation for them to part with. The Dodgers, on the other hand, had a bigger appetite to take the same sized punch. The players they gave up simply mean less to them because of their ability to backfill. They could absorb more, and so they did.For a moment, though, let’s forget the Tigers and the players they now have. Because this deal is all about the Dodgers.No team in sports over the past few years has inspired such frustration and fervor as these Dodgers, whose financial and on-field dominance has earned the ire of 29 other fan bases. The acquisition of Skubal, a player any of those clubs could have had for a worthy return, w  

Content Source: Yahoo News

Image Credit: Getty Images

All rights to the news content and images belong to their respective copyright owners.