The Tigers have perhaps the biggest dilemmas of any team in baseball facing them between now and the Aug. 3 trade deadline: keep reigning two-time Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal and make a run at the postseason in a mediocre American League, or cash in one of the game’s top arms for a significant haul that would help them in the future but tank their 2026 chances. This conundrum isn’t anything new; it’s been staring the Tigers in the face since a disastrous 6-22 performance in May left them needing a Herculean surge in the standings to avoid being slam-dunk sellers.
That surge has largely come to pass. Since the calendar flipped to from May to June, Detroit has gone 25-16. The Tigers are playing very well right now — but not quite well enough to remove all doubt about which direction they should choose. In another season, a 47-54 record on July 22 would point strongly toward the sell side of the argument. In 2026, that’s good enough to be only 6.5 games back of the division-leading White Sox (53-47) and five games behind the blistering-hot Red Sox (51-48), who’ve won their past 14 games.
The next 12 days will be pivotal, and every win or loss will weigh into president of baseball operations Scott Harris’ thinking. Fortunately for Harris & Co., they’ve got one more game against a good Cubs team before a run of 10 straight games against losing clubs to close out the pre-deadline portion of the schedule. Three of those are against an Orioles team that has a slightly better record than Detroit, but the Tigers also host the last-place Royals for four games and play their final three pre-deadline games against an A’s team that is mired in a 3-16 swoon. The Royals, notably, just placed MVP candidate Bobby Witt Jr. on the 10-day IL and won’t have him available for that series against the Tigers.
There’s been plenty of speculation and reporting on what the Tigers could do, should do and will do. Ken Rosenthal and Will Sammon of The Athletic reported this morning that one path the Tigers have considered, if they do trade Skubal, is targeting a package of young talent headlined by a lesser but more controllable big league starter to plug right into Skubal’s spot in the rotation. Rosenthal and Sammon speculatively list names like L.A.’s Emmet Sheehan, New York’s Will Warren or Ryan Weathers, Philadelphia’s Andrew Painter, or one of Atlanta’s young arms (e.g. JR Ritchie, AJ Smith-Shawver). There’s logic behind the approach, of course, but such a gambit would clearly dampen the club’s chances of both reaching the postseason and making a deep run this year.
One thing that hasn’t been focused on quite as much but stands as a pivotal component of the entire decision: the Tigers’ luxury tax status. The Tigers’ compensation for keeping Skubal, making a qualifying offer and losing him to another club would be a draft pick. For teams that receive revenue sharing — that includes the Tigers — said pick would come at the end of the first round, so long as the player in question signs for more than $50MM. (Spoiler: Skubal will sign for more than that this winter.)
For luxury tax payors, however, that compensation drops to a pick after the fourth round — an enormous downgrade both in terms of the pure prospect value of a player selected and in terms of the extra money that’d be allocated into Detroit’s draft pool. A pick at the end of first round, in 2026, had a slot value around $3.2MM. The first of this year’s comp picks after the fourth round (which the Astros received as compensation for Framber Valdez signing with the Tigers) carried a slot value of $569K. That’s a gap of just over $2.6MM in terms of draft pool — a significant amount in the current hard-capped system.
The Tigers, as things currently stand, look as though they’ll receive the lesser of those two compensation packages. Our new Payroll Tracker at MLBTR, powered by the excellent work of MLB payroll guru Ethan Hullihen, shows the Tigers over the tax threshold by a margin of about $1.643MM. That would lead to a small $329K tax bill for the Tigers, but because of the Skubal compensation situation, the tax will come with a far more significant cost to the Tigers if they end up over the $244MM mark.
Of course, even the best public estimates — and, candidly, we do feel that Ethan’s are just that — are only estimates. But even if the Tigers are ever-so-narrowly under the line, they wouldn’t be able to keep Skubal and add anything of note to their current payroll without dropping their compensation for Skubal. And if the Tigers do opt to hold Skubal, it stands to reason they’d be motivated to make other additions to further their chances, rather than simply standing pat and hoping for the best. As such, they’d either need another club to pay down all of the salary on any new acquisitions (thus increasing the prospect cost to make those trades) … or trade away another player making a notable salary in order to balance the scales.
There are plenty of players on the roster Detroit could look to move in order to accommodate a scenario where they keep Skubal, try to bolster their roster and avoid dropping the compensation they’d receive for Skubal signing elsewhere in free agency. It’d make for a complicated gambit, but it’s feasible.
Kenley Jansen and Kyle Finnegan stand as the most obvious examples of players to move in an effort to strike this complicated balance. Both carry significant luxury tax hits: $11MM for Jansen, $9.5MM for Finnegan. Even in a scenario where Detroit is actually slightly further across the tax line than believed, trimming the remainder of either deal would dip them back under the line. There are other names to be considered — Zach McKinstry, Matt Vierling, Jake Rogers, Spencer Torkelson — but they’re all having down seasons while playing on lesser salaries. Jack Flaherty and Will Vest are both on the IL (the 60-day, in Vest’s case), making them unlikely candidates.
Given the various factors at play here, it’s quite likely that Detroit will take this decision down to the wire. But in the event that the Tigers play well against a looming slate of sub-.500 clubs — as one would expect — it’d behoove them to try to subtract some non-Skubal salary, presumably all while simultaneously looking to add low-cost (or paid-down) players to bolster the team’s chances in the final two months.
