Tarik Skubal
Tarik Skubal is the Tigers left-hander who won back-to-back AL Cy Young Awards and the 2024 pitching Triple Crown before a 2026 trade to the Dodgers.
Tarik Skubal is a left-handed starting pitcher whose climb from ninth-round draft pick to the best arm in the American League is one of the defining arcs of 2020s baseball. Across the 2024 and 2025 seasons he became the first AL pitcher in a generation to win the Cy Young Award in back-to-back years, bracketing a 2024 campaign in which he swept the pitching Triple Crown. His story is also a labor story: a record-setting arbitration fight and a stalled extension that ended with the Detroit Tigers trading their ace to the Los Angeles Dodgers at the 2026 deadline, with Skubal a season away from free agency.
| Vitals | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 20, 1996, Hayward, California |
| Position | Starting pitcher (throws left, bats right) |
| Teams | Detroit Tigers (2020–2026); Los Angeles Dodgers (2026–) |
| Draft | 2018, 9th round, 255th overall, Detroit Tigers |
| Contract status (Sep. 26, 2026) | On a $32M arbitration salary; free agent after the 2026 season |
| Number | 29 |
Seattle University and the 2018 draft
The late bloomer. Skubal pitched at Seattle University, going 21–7 as a Redhawks starter despite Tommy John surgery that cost him developmental time. Passed over as a 29th-round pick by the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2017, he returned to school and was taken by the Tigers in the 9th round, 255th overall, in the 2018 MLB Draft, signing for a $350,000 bonus. The pedigree was modest; the stuff was not, and he moved quickly through Detroit’s system as a strikeout-heavy prospect.
Detroit: the climb (2020–2023)
The debut. Skubal reached the majors on August 18, 2020 and struggled at first, posting a 5.63 ERA in the shortened season. A full rookie year in 2021 (8–12, 4.34, 164 strikeouts) showed the raw punch-out ability without the command to match.
The refinement. The 2022 season brought a step forward (3.52 ERA over 117.2 innings) before it was cut short. Returning from injury in 2023, Skubal was a different pitcher over 15 starts: a 2.80 ERA and a 0.896 WHIP across 80.1 innings, the harbinger of the dominance to come.
2024: the Triple Crown season
The leap. In 2024 Skubal put together one of the great modern pitching seasons, going 18–4 with a 2.39 ERA and 228 strikeouts over 192 innings. Leading the American League in all three categories gave him the pitching Triple Crown — the first AL pitcher to claim it in a full season since Justin Verlander in 2011, and the first pitcher in either league to do it since Shane Bieber in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.
The hardware. Skubal won the 2024 AL Cy Young Award unanimously, taking all 30 first-place votes and making him the third consecutive unanimous AL winner. He was also named an All-Star.
2025: the repeat
The encore. Rather than regress, Skubal was better by rate in 2025: a 13–6 record, a 2.21 ERA and 241 strikeouts over 195.1 innings. His 2.21 mark led the AL, making him the first Detroit starter to lead the league in ERA in back-to-back seasons since Hal Newhouser in 1945–46 and the lowest qualifying Tigers ERA since Denny McLain in 1968.
The vote. He won the 2025 AL Cy Young Award with 26 of 30 first-place votes, finishing ahead of Boston’s Garrett Crochet and Houston’s Hunter Brown. The repeat made him the first AL pitcher to win consecutive Cy Youngs since Pedro Martínez in 1999–2000, and the first back-to-back winner in either league since Jacob deGrom in 2018–19.
The arsenal. Skubal’s dominance is built on a rare mix of velocity and command. Per Baseball Savant, he leans on a four-seam fastball that averages 96.8 mph (roughly 38% usage) and a changeup near 87.7 mph (about 26%), rounded out by a sinker, a slider and a curveball. The changeup, with heavy seam-shifted movement, is widely regarded as one of the best in the game. In 2026 his Statcast percentiles ranked in the 97th percentile for chase rate, the 91st for strikeout rate and the 90th for both whiff rate and expected ERA — the profile of a pitcher who misses bats and limits damage at once.
2026: the arbitration record and the trade
The standoff. With free agency approaching, the contract question hardened into a public dispute. Skubal and the Tigers exchanged the widest arbitration figures in the process’s history — the player at $32 million, the club at $19 million — and Skubal won the $32 million award at a February hearing, a figure that surpassed Juan Soto’s previous arbitration record. Detroit, a “file and trial” team, anchored its number to David Price’s 2015 arbitration figure. On the long term, agent Scott Boras and the club never bridged the gap; Skubal said the Tigers made no long-term offer during the offseason, and ESPN reported he was positioned to command upward of $400 million on his next deal.
The trade. With an extension out of reach, Detroit moved its ace at the deadline. On August 2, 2026, the Dodgers acquired Skubal — a deal agreed the previous day and announced Sunday — in exchange for outfielder Zyhir Hope and right-handers River Ryan and Brady Smith, one of the largest deadline deals in years. Split between the two clubs, his 2026 line stood at 11–7 with a 2.85 ERA and 176 strikeouts as of late September 2026.
By the numbers
Season-by-season standard pitching, per Baseball-Reference:
| Season | Team | W–L | ERA | GS | IP | SO | WHIP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | DET | 1–4 | 5.63 | 7 | 32.0 | 37 | 1.219 |
| 2021 | DET | 8–12 | 4.34 | 29 | 149.1 | 164 | 1.259 |
| 2022 | DET | 7–8 | 3.52 | 21 | 117.2 | 117 | 1.156 |
| 2023 | DET | 7–3 | 2.80 | 15 | 80.1 | 102 | 0.896 |
| 2024 | DET | 18–4 | 2.39 | 31 | 192.0 | 228 | 0.922 |
| 2025 | DET | 13–6 | 2.21 | 31 | 195.1 | 241 | 0.891 |
| 2026 | DET/LAD | 11–7 | 2.85 | 25 | 151.2 | 176 | 0.989 |
Career totals
Ranks
- 1st AL ERA, 2024 (2.39)
- 1st AL wins, 2024 (18)
- 1st AL strikeouts, 2024 (228)
- 1st AL ERA, 2025 (2.21)
Honors
- 2024 AL Cy Young (unanimous)
- 2025 AL Cy Young
- 2024 AL pitching Triple Crown
- 2× All-Star (2024, 2025)
- 2× AL ERA title (2024, 2025)
Per Baseball-Reference and the 2025 AL pitching leaders, through Sep. 26, 2026.
The arguments
Who was to blame for the failed extension? One side, sympathetic to Detroit, holds that a mid-market club could not responsibly guarantee a nine-figure, long-term deal to a pitcher and that the front office’s caution was sound asset management. The other, voiced by Skubal and Boras, points to the fact that the Tigers never tabled a genuine long-term offer during the offseason, framing the eventual trade as a choice the club made rather than one forced upon it.
Did the arbitration hearing poison the relationship? Because Detroit operates as a “file and trial” team, it took its two-time Cy Young winner to a hearing and argued, on the record, that his résumé did not clear David Price’s old benchmark — while filing $13 million below his number. Critics argue that litigating against a franchise cornerstone accelerated his departure; defenders counter that the process is standard, impersonal and separate from the trade calculus.
Was trading him the right call? Skeptics saw dealing a generational arm as an admission the Tigers could not compete for their own star. Supporters argued the return — a package fronted by Zyhir Hope, River Ryan and Brady Smith — was the responsible haul for a pitcher months from free agency, and preferable to losing him for a compensatory pick.
Why it matters
Skubal’s arc compresses two stories the sport keeps retelling: the late-round pick who becomes the best pitcher alive, and the small-market ace who outgrows the team that developed him. Between 2024 and 2025 he was the rare starter to win consecutive Cy Youngs in an era built to prevent it, and the Triple Crown season gives him a line that will read as elite for as long as pitchers are measured by wins, ERA and strikeouts. The 2026 trade to Los Angeles reframed him again — as the prize of a deadline and the test case for what the next great free-agent contract for a starting pitcher will look like.