The Tigers are now down to their final season of control over the American League’s best pitcher. Tarik Skubal is entering his last year of arbitration and trending towards the largest pitching contract in history if he stays healthy.
Jon Heyman of The New York Post wrote this evening that Skubal could seek a deal of at least $400MM. Heyman reports that Detroit’s extension offer last offseason was shy of the $170MM which Garrett Crochet received from the Red Sox in April. Heyman specifies that the Tigers’ offer came before Crochet’s extension.
Much will be made of the more than $200MM gap between those two numbers, but that doesn’t consider the timing of Detroit’s offer. The front office certainly wouldn’t be under any illusions now that a sub-$200MM proposal would be close. Their previous offer came when Skubal was two years from free agency and before the Crochet precedent.
It wasn’t clear last offseason that Crochet would command as strong a deal as he did. That contract was nearly $50MM above the previous top extension for a pitcher with between four and five years of service time (Jacob deGrom’s $120.5MM deal with the Mets from 2019). The Red Sox certainly don’t have any regrets after Crochet’s dominant ’25 season, but that deal pushed the extension market dramatically forward. While it’s not clear precisely what Detroit had offered, it’s safe to presume it was north of the deGrom extension and would have been a record within his service class before the Crochet signing.
Skubal bet on himself and is in position to truly cash in as a result. He’s going to win his second consecutive AL Cy Young Award after posting a 2.21 ERA with 241 strikeouts across 31 starts. He is two and a half seasons removed from the flexor surgery that ended his 2022 campaign. Most importantly, he’s now 12 months away from the open market.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto received the largest guarantee for a pitcher in MLB history when he signed with the Dodgers for $325MM. That was in large part due to his unusual circumstances coming over from Japan. He was an established ace in NPB and widely viewed as one of the two best pitchers (alongside Paul Skenes) who had yet to pitch in MLB at the time. Yamamoto came over before his age-25 season — earlier than any MLB ace could accrue the necessary six years of service time to hit free agency. He commanded a 12-year deal that was three years longer than any other pitching contract.
Among domestic free agent pitchers, Gerrit Cole has the record on his nine-year, $324MM contract with the Yankees. Cole had yet to win a Cy Young but was coming off two straight top five finishes. He hit the market at age 29, while Skubal is on track to become a free agent at 30. Cole’s deal is six years old, so there’ll surely be an adjustment for inflation.
Cole’s $36MM average annual value was a record for a pitcher at the time. It’s now down to sixth — not including the Shohei Ohtani deal — on an annual basis. Late-career aces Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer and Zack Wheeler have each reached or topped $42MM on two- or three-year contracts. deGrom received $37MM annually on his five-year deal with Texas, while Blake Snell is making $36.4MM per season from the Dodgers (albeit with deferrals that drop the net present AAV to the $31-32MM range).
Those are all free agent precedents. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projects Skubal for a $17.8MM salary in his last arbitration year. Detroit wouldn’t get much of a discount on an extension, but a long-term deal this offseason would come with the risk that he suffers an injury next year.
The Tigers have signed two contracts above $200MM: Prince Fielder’s free agent deal and Miguel Cabrera’s franchise-high $248MM extension. They’re each more than a decade old and came under the ownership tenure of the late Mike Ilitich. Since his son Christopher Ilitch took control of the organization in 2017, they’ve signed one nine-figure deal — the $140MM Javier Baez addition. Detroit has a relatively clean long-term payroll outlook aside from Baez’s $24MM salaries over the next two seasons. Jack Flaherty has a $20MM player option for 2026, while Colt Keith is signed for $4-5MM for the next four years.
[Related Poll: Should The Tigers Consider A Skubal Trade?]
There’s enough payroll space that it’s conceivable the Tigers could make a competitive extension offer to Skubal. If talks don’t gain traction, they’d need to decide whether to hold him for a final season or entertain trade possibilities. Detroit is coming off consecutive playoff berths and spent most of the ’25 season in control of the AL Central. It’s difficult to envision the Tigers being legitimate contenders in 2026 if they were to trade Skubal, even if they built a return around controllable big league talent. There’s a strong argument for simply holding Skubal in the hope that he carries them to a deep postseason run and making a qualifying offer next winter. If they struggle in the first half, he’d be a marquee deadline trade chip.
The alternative this offseason would be to follow the respective Red Sox, Padres and Astros precedents with Mookie Betts, Juan Soto and Kyle Tucker. Those teams all traded their superstar before his final season of arbitration. That went terribly for Boston. San Diego did very well on the Soto return and has won at least 90 games in each of the past two seasons. The jury is still out on Houston’s trade of Tucker. They got a strong three-player return but came up shy of the postseason this year. Those teams were all navigating short-term payroll restrictions from ownership that shouldn’t be an issue for Detroit with how little money they have on the books.
President of baseball operations Scott Harris gave a non-answer when asked about Skubal’s future during the Tigers’ end-of-season presser on Monday. “I can’t comment on our players being traded … so I’m going to respond by not actually commenting on it,” Harris said. “Tarik is a Tiger. I hope he wins the Cy Young for the second consecutive year. He’s an incredible pitcher and we’re lucky to have him.”
