Tarik Skubal's return to Detroit for the first time since being sent to the Los Angeles Dodgers at the trade deadline should have been emotional for all the right reasons. The Tigers honored Skubal with a video tribute before his start on Friday night, and the two-time Cy Young winner seemed genuinely moved by the atmosphere at Comerica Park. So, naturally, what everybody's talking about in the aftermath is ... an espresso machine.
Wait, what?
Yes, an espresso machine — specifically, an espresso machine that Skubal and then-teammate Casey Mize bought for the Tigers clubhouse at the start of the 2026 season. It became an instant hit at spring training, so much so that it developed a nickname — Casey's Cafe — and made the trip north for Opening Day.
And then, after the trade deadline, it wound up heading west to Los Angeles, per Skubal's request. The Tigers, for their part, didn't seem too miffed by it; "couldn't believe it," Spencer Torkelson told the Detroit News, tongue planted firmly in cheek, "that was a really good espresso machine." Some fans, however, haven't been so quick to forgive.
Tarik Skubal's espresso machine snafu shattered Tigers fans' illusions once and for all
Skubal tried to downplay the act, deploying that tried and true strategy: When it doubt, blame it on your spouse.
“That was my wife,” Skubal joked to The Athletic. “I wanted to leave it and get a new one, but she wouldn’t let me. My wife was like, ‘That was too expensive to just run the charge back.’”
This might all seem like much ado about nothing, or at least very, very little. And I'm certainly not going to impugn Skubal's character over it. What I will do, though, is come to the defense of Tigers fans for whom this detail has stuck in their craw a bit — and changed their relationship with the man who was just a few weeks ago the face of their franchise.
It may just be an espresso machine, but it's also a metaphor. Throughout the long and winding Skubal saga, from the breakdown of extension talks to the team's decision not to trade him last offseason to the will-they-won't-they routine this summer, Detroit had tried as hard as possible to give their star pitcher the benefit of the doubt. He loved the only city he'd ever known as a professional and didn't want to find himself in trade rumors, the thinking went, and if he was eventually moved it was a failure of the Tigers front office.
That illusion is harder to maintain now that Skubal has left Detroit behind. I have no doubt that he loves Tigers fans and the coaches and teammates he played with over the last several years. But his relationship was, ultimatley, a business arrangement; the moment that arrangement no longer existed, well, it's his espresso machine, and he gets to do whatever he wants with it.
Suddenly, all of Skubal's rhetoric about how Detroit is where he wants to be and how he's not in this for the money seems a little more hollow. It also underlines the fundamental difference between the Tigers and Dodgers — whereas the former couldn't afford to make Skubal a serious extension offer, the latter has already wowed him with every possible amenity, from the massive home clubhouse at Dodger Stadium to cushier travel. Given all those resources, couldn't he simply have bought another espresso machine, or had the richest team in baseball acquire one for him?
Maybe this is making a mountain out of a molehill. Then again, what are sports if not an excuse to form emotional attachments to people we barely know and may never meet? The reason Skubal is in line to make those hundreds of millions in the first place is because of those attachments, after all, and he should've known that everything about how he treated his former team would be put under the microscope.
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