The Rich Get Richer: Dodgers Acquire Superstar Tarik Skubal

Skubal spoke to the media soon after the deal was announced, expressing his excitement to join Los Angeles, but also his sadness to leave Detroit.

“At this time I’m excited to be a Dodger. I’m excited to get down there and meet all those guys and, you know, chase three championships in a row. It’s hard to do, and I’m excited to be a part of that. But yeah, it’s a lot of different emotions. Definitely kind of a roller coaster a little bit… Yeah, it’s tough. You know, I love all those guys in there. They’re some of my best friends, so yeah, that’ll be tough for sure,”

The 29-year-old Skubal is playing on the one-year, $32 million contract extension he signed with the Tigers in February after winning his arbitration case. He’s gone 7-5 across 16 starts this season, sporting a 2.79 ERA with 116 strikeouts and just 14 walks in the process.

Understandably, it’s an emotional time for Skubal, who has never seemed to want to leave Detroit. The problem was that the organization’s seeming unwillingness to pay him what he wants and deserves on a new long-term extension meant things just weren’t going to work out anymore.

It’s a difficult day that Skubal and much of the baseball world knew was coming, and it’s just another name added to the list of superstars to have joined the Dodgers in recent years.

How anyone in baseball is going to be able to stack up with, let alone even handle, a potential top-three rotation of Skubal, Shohei Ohtani, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto remains to be seen. The quest for a three-peat is on in full force in Los Angeles.