Inside Skubal trade negotiations: Why Tigers chose Dodgers - ESPN

THE CALLS WENT out Saturday afternoon, earlier than anticipated. The Detroit Tigers were ready to trade the best pitcher in the world, and they needed best-and-final offers from the teams still involved in the biggest baseball sweepstakes of the summer.

Exactly what those suitors were willing to surrender for Tarik Skubal, the 29-year-old left-hander who has won back-to-back American League Cy Young Awards, Detroit didn't know. But over the previous 24 hours, the Tigers had canvassed the market and emerged with the sense that multiple teams were willing to meet their asking price. Rather than wait until the 6 p.m. ET deadline Monday to shop offers and pit teams against one another and create a bidding war, they wanted to move.

Earlier in the day, word filtered around front offices that the Seattle Mariners were listening on right-hander George Kirby, a pitcher whose performance paled compared with Skubal's but who won't reach free agency until after the 2028 season. Skubal, on the other hand, is slated to hit free agency after the season. The Tigers knew they were primed to land a haul of talent for what amounted to 10 regular-season starts by Skubal and, best-case scenario, five more in the postseason — and they feared if they waited too long, their best options could opt for a pitcher like Kirby with multiple years of control and potentially collapse the Skubal market.

Such fears, according to conversations with more than a dozen people directly involved in the Skubal discussions, were well-founded. Teams were reluctant to stake their entire deadline on the possibility of acquiring Skubal, lest they find themselves on the losing end and reach 6:01 p.m. empty-handed.

Already the discussions were making involved teams