The Detroit Tigers trading Tarik Skubal to the Los Angeles Dodgers at the trade deadline made a lot of sense in a vacuum. They got a strong haul in return for a pitcher who almost certainly was going to test free agency and depart that winter. Doing so, however, made the odds of a playoff push incredibly slim. And with Skubal set to return to Detroit this weekend, that reality is settling in.
The Tigers are cratering, and Skubal himself has a chance to deliver what could be a season-defining blow on Friday night when he faces off against his former team.
Tigers are on the verge of falling out of playoff race
Despite trading Skubal away, they looked like a team that could possibly make the playoffs. They had been playing extremely well prior to the deadline, and the AL has been weak all year. Even post-deadline, the Tigers won six of their first nine games. Unfortunately, they've lost 10 of 12 since, falling to 62-71 overall.
They're technically still alive, but they're now 8.0 games back in the AL Central and 5.5 games back of the third Wild Card spot, with six teams in front of them. Their odds of making the postseason have dipped to just 2.4 percent, per FanGraphs, way down from 18.3 percent on deadline day and 37.4 percent before this recent skid.
For Detroit to even finish with a .500 record, they'd need to go 19-10 the rest of the way, and even that probably wouldn't even be good enough for them to make the playoffs. They'd probably need to go 21-8 at the very least to have a shot, meaning that they can ill-afford to take many losses down the stretch. This puts even more pressure on them to avoid a loss in Skubal's homecoming.
Tigers are getting what they deserve for trading Tarik Skubal
Again, trading Skubal made a lot of sense in the moment. The odds that the Tigers would win the World Series with him this season were slim, so trading him, especially for the haul they did, before losing him for nothing but a draft pick is a move that many general managers would've made.
With that being said, Detroit's postseason odds were not zero at the deadline, and they were just 2.5 games back of a Wild Card spot when they traded Skubal away (with an outside shot at a division title too!). The Tigers were alive in the race, even if they weren't favored, yet they chose to trade Skubal (and Casey Mize) away anyway, all but waving the white flag on this season in exchange for boosting their odds in the future.
Many Tigers fans were on board with that trade, but it's really hard to ignore the fact that the team had a chance to go on a run in such a weak AL and chose the easy way out. They could have put their chips in and tried one last time to win with Skubal. Would that have backfired? Maybe! But it was an option.
They've lost a ton of ground since this trade, and it's only fitting that the guy they traded has a chance to make them seriously regret it. A loss on Friday could put the Tigers 6.5 games back of a playoff spot, and with less than a month to go and so many teams in front of them, that kind of deficit feels realistically insurmountable.
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