In the world of Major League Baseball, all eyes are on the Detroit Tigers’ Tarik Skubal arbitration talks. The team wants to pay their ace pitcher somewhere in the vicinity of $19 million per year, while the back-to-back Cy Young award winner wants closer to $32 million. Skubal will be a free agent in the fall/winter of 2026, so this will likely be the last season he pitches in Michigan.
It makes no sense at all that Detroit is unwilling to budge closer to the top of the market dollar value for Skubal. Along with Pittsburgh Pirates ace, Paul Skenes, the Tigers’ left is one of the best pitchers in the game today. The only thing that makes sense is that the team knows he won’t sign a long-term deal there, and they are being petty in his final season.
It’s important to look at the stats of some of MLB’s highest-paid pitchers to understand how Skubal is taking a hometown discount. The most important stats to consider (aside from dollars) are age, strikeouts per walk, and WHERIP (Walks+Hits+Earned Runs per Inning Pitched).
MLB’s Stat Leaders Per Contract
Skubal is 29 years old and still in his prime. The contracts he will be compared to here are from one pitcher who is the same age as him, and a few who are much older.
Skubal averaged 11.1 strikeouts per nine innings last season and 7.30 strikeouts per walk. His WHERIP was 1.137, and it bears mentioning again that this was during his second Cy Young season in two years.
In 2022, Max Scherzer signed a three-year deal with the New York Mets for $130 million. That’s an AAV of $43.3 million per year. At the time of the deal, Scherzer was 37 years old and was coming off a season with a WHERIP identical to Skubal (1.137), a K/9 that was similar (11.8), and a K/BB that was inferior (6.56).
Blake Snell signed a five-year, $182 million deal in 2025 with the Los Angeles Dodgers (AAV of $36.4 million). He was 32 years old. His 2024 season was not even in the same conversation as Skubal’s. He had a WHERIP of 1.395 and a K/BB ratio of 3.30:1. It’s obvious, for many reasons, that the Tigers are not the Dodgers. They don’t have the same swag, nor do they have the checkbook. Compared to Snell’s deal, however, Skubal is a bargain.
Jacob DeGrom signed a five-year, $185 million deal ($37M per year) with the Texas Rangers in 2023. His previous season was better than Skubal’s by a lot. He had a WHERIP of 1.088, averaged 14.3 K/9, and had a 12.75:1 K/BB ratio. The big issues with his deal were the fact that he hadn’t ever really had a fully healthy season. He was also going into his 35-year-old season.
A Tigers Tarik Skubal Arbitration Deal Needs To Favor The Player
The reality of the situation is that this should not be going to arbitration. Skubal should be signing a $400 million deal with the Tigers right now, but the team is too cheap to let that happen. When the judge sits down to listen to both sides of this negotiation, hopefully, he has the numbers of these other pitchers’ deals in front of him. If the Tigers are hell-bent on keeping Skubal for one more year, they need to pony up the cash, and since he is only asking for $32 million in his age 29 season, they need to give it to him.
