The Tigers and MLB picked a fight with Tarik Skubal. Now they’re paying for it

The Detroit Tigers asked for this. No, the Detroit Tigers and Major League Baseball’s Labor Relations Department asked for it, and not necessarily in that order.

In initial negotiations, the parties came up with the brilliant idea to offer Tarik Skubal a minimal raise over the record $19.75 million for a pitcher in arbitration — a standard David Price established 11 years ago when Barack Obama was in his second term as president.

And then, in the formal exchange of potential salaries, the Tigers offered their back-to-back American League Cy Young winner $750,000 less than Price. Apparently, they believed the three-person arbitration panel would be loath to set a precedent if Skubal sought a historic increase over Price, which he did by requesting $32 million.

Pick a fight with your biggest star, roll the dice against one of the best pitchers in the game, and you get what you deserve. And make no mistake, the Tigers and LRD suffered a major blow when the panel ruled in Skubal’s favor Thursday, awarding him a record $32 million salary in arbitration, $1 million more than Juan Soto’s previous mark.

MLB can fire arbitrators at the end of the arb season, an option available to the Players Association as well under the collective bargaining agreement. The league can also declare the arbitration system broken, as it has in the past. But it never made sense that hitters’ salaries in the process accelerated at a much higher rate than pitchers’.

Skubal, as a player with five-plus years of service and “special accomplishments” to cite, held a trump card. The collective bargaining agreement allows him to compare himself not just to players in his service class but to all players, including those who signed lucrative free-agent contracts.

The outcome, then, seemed only logical. Skubal, 29, won his case without even needing a data point that emerged after his hearing Wednesday — left-hander Framber Valdez’s three-year, $115 million free-agent agreement with the Tigers.

Deferrals will reduce the net present-day value of Valdez’s $38.3 million AAV, but it will still be well above Skubal’s requested number. The discrepancy at first blush makes no sense. Valdez has never won a Cy Young. But the lower number for Skubal reflects the differences between free agency, in which values are determined on the open market, and arbitration, in which they are based on past precedent.

Some might view the news of Valdez’s deal coming after Skubal’s hearing as an underhanded maneuver by the Tigers, an attempt to hide the ball. But the arbitrators generally convene and make their decision in the hours after the hearing, then announce their ruling the next day, according to one person familiar with the process. Besides, Skubal had at least one other relevant comp — left-hander Blake Snell, who also has won two Cy Youngs, though not back-to-back.

Snell signed a five-year, $182 million free-agent contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers in December 2024. His $36.4 million AAV was reduced to about $31.3 million after deferrals. At either number, as a player with four and not five years of service, Snell was a better comp for Skubal than Price or Jacob deGrom, who received the previous largest raise for a pitcher in arbitration — an increase of $9.6 million.

To win his case, Skubal did not even need to use the same tactic Tim Lincecum employed in 2009, when he walked into his hearing and placed his back-to-back Cy Young Awards on a table. Bobby Evans, the San Francisco Giants’ general manager at the time, immediately asked Lincecum’s agent, Jeff Borris, if they could step outside. Forty-five minutes later, the parties agreed on a two-year, $23 million contract, avoiding a hearing.

While Skubal also brought his Cy Young Award plaques to his hearing, he never presented them to the arbitrator, according to people in the room. His agent, Scott Boras, wanted the awards available in case he needed to make a point. But he chose not to bring them out, believing he could prove his case without using props.

Back when Lincecum settled, the parties still negotiated right up until the start of the hearing. Teams were not using the file-and-trial system, in which they proceed directly to a hearing after exchanging numbers with the player. But clubs in recent years, under direction from the league, have used file-and-trial to draw a line in the sand.

While MLB and the Tigers declined comment, people familiar with their thinking said they believed Skubal and Boras never intended to negotiate prior to the exchange date, preferring instead to go to a hearing and seek a new benchmark in arbitration.

Skubal, a member of the union’s executive board, was the perfect player to test the boundaries of the system. He is headed toward a potential $400 million contract in free agency. And even if he had lost his case, his raise would have been $8.85 million.

The question, though, remains: Why didn’t the league take a more defensible position and recommend to the Tigers an initial offer to Skubal that would have better reflected the pitcher’s achievements?

If the Tigers’ filing number had been closer to the eventual midpoint in this case — $25.5 million — they would not have looked as patronizing. And they might have actually won.

But no. The league views arbitration as an impersonal exercise, with little regard for a player’s stature or the impact of its data-driven approach on a team’s culture.

In 2019, The Athletic reported that the league would present a $20 championship belt to the club that did the most to keep salaries down in arbitration. The league has since abandoned the practice, but continues to pressure teams to hold the line.

Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris, in only his fourth year at the helm, probably could not stand up to the league the way a more experienced executive like Dave Dombrowski or Brian Cashman might have. Both Harris and GM Jeff Greenberg were in the room, but the Tigers hired outside counsel to handle the case.

It’s debatable how many future pitchers Skubal’s triumph will help in arbitration, assuming the process even remains intact in the next collective bargaining agreement (it could disappear or be significantly altered under a salary cap). Skubal is a unicorn, and Paul Skenes is the only other current pitcher who might match or exceed his statistical profile as a five-plus player.

No matter. For Skubal and Boras, this was about making a point. By relying on years-old precedents in refusing to acknowledge Skubal’s dominance, the league and Tigers fought a losing battle.

They asked for trouble. And they got what they deserved.