2026 MLB trade deadline: Why Dodgers are in/out on Tarik Skubal - ESPN

A few weeks ago, Tarik Skubal being dealt before Major League Baseball's trade deadline seemed like an inevitability. Now, it's at least a debate. The Detroit Tigers, fresh off taking two of three from the lowly Los Angeles Angels over the weekend, have won 10 of their first 14 games in July and are 25-15 since the start of June. They're still six games below .500, but in a watered-down American League, they're also just 4½ games out of a wild-card spot — albeit with five teams to jump.

The growing sentiment among rival executives is that the Tigers will hold onto Skubal beyond the Aug. 3 deadline, in the leadup to his free agency, and give themselves every chance to make a run in 2026. But there's a caveat: They must keep playing well. Really well, perhaps. Such is the predicament they put themselves in by finishing May in a tie for baseball's worst record. Any slipup, and Skubal — the reigning, back-to-back AL Cy Young Award winner, one of few men who can singlehandedly alter the dynamic of an entire sport — could be had.

If so, all eyes could be on the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Do the Dodgers need Skubal? Not really. Will Andrew Friedman and his front office lieutenants bend over backward to get him? Probably not. But in a year when a muddled playoff race will significantly limit the amount of true difference-makers available at midseason, Skubal represents a fascinating scenario for baseball's most powerful franchise.

On one hand, the Dodgers hold the sport's second-best record, highest run differential and largest division lead, with key reinforcements on the way back. If there's one team that can win it all without a big move, it's them. On the other, this is a franchise that has shown it will stop at nothing to