No, the Chicago Cubs Should Not Trade for Tarik Skubal

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The Cubs have started their second half 3-3, which is nowhere near good enough. That sounds cruel, but life in the NL Central these days is that unforgiving. The Brewers, who were already sailing toward their fifth division title in six years, have gone 5-1 over the same span, pushing Chicago back to 7 games behind in the standings. FanGraphs still gives the Cubs a handsome 80.7% chance to make the playoffs, and they still offer them fair odds to advance a bit in October. But the truth of the matter is that this isn't going to be The Year, or anything like it, for this team. They have too many flaws, and their competition is too strong. They won't win the division, and their chances for a deep run in October are slim.

Fans and media personalities have tethered the team to Tarik Skubal in trade rumors throughout the early summer, after the Cubs lost Cade Horton, Edward Cabrera and Ben Brown to injuries. Without those three, the club desperately needs a frontline starter to brace the rotation, and with the Tigers falling out of contention, Skubal does appear to be available. Here's what I wrote about him for our DiamondCentric Top Trade Candidates list:

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Tarik Skubal, Tigers

LHP Age: 29 FA: Nov 2026 Sal: $32m

To say pitchers this dominant rarely become available at the deadline would be an understatement served two ways. First, pitchers this dominant essentially never become available at the deadline, because second, pitchers hardly ever reach this level of sustained dominance at all, anymore. Skubal is defending two straight American League Cy Young Awards, and while the bone chips in his elbow that forced him to have a fancy new surgery will probably prevent him from winning a third in a row, he’s still one of the top five pitchers in the sport at the moment. A massive lefty, he overpowers hitters with two different fastballs (four-seamer and sinker) that flirt with 100 miles per hour and two elite secondary offerings, in his slider and changeup. He even mixes in the occasional curveball, to keep you honest and make sure you’re late when the heater comes back around. The stuff is augmented by elite control; he’s stingier about free passes than any other starter in the league. In short, he’s an old-fashioned ace, and no player can match the impact he could have for someone come October. That ‘someone’ probably won’t be the Tigers, though. They can’t get more than two steps forward without taking two steps back this year, even since Skubal’s return, and it would take incredible fortitude (bordering on insanity) for Scott Harris to hold onto Skubal amid a lost season and risk having him leave via free agency, for nothing but small-time draft pick compensation.

However, here, I'll also add what I've heard from multiple sources in front offices around the league: the price tag on Skubal is high. You need to start with a top-100-caliber prospect or an equivalently gifted major leaguer under long-term team control, and then you need to throw in at least one meaningful secondary piece. For the Cubs, this would mean trading Jefferson Rojas or Josiah Hartshorn, plus a lottery-ticket arm like Kaleb Wing or Dominick Reid. The Tigers are not high on Moisés Ballesteros or Matt Shaw, according to sources familiar with the team's thinking, so making either of those players the headliner in a Skubal deal is a non-starter.

In the Cubs' current position, with their current roster and given that Skubal will be a free agent at season's end, it doesn't make sense for the team to pay what it would cost to get him. They don't have enough depth in the farm system to make a trade with that much desperation in it.

Instead, here are the names to watch most closely for the team over the next week and a half.

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Reid Detmers, Angels

LHP Age: 26 FA: Nov 2028 Sal: $2.63m

After a one-season sojourn to the bullpen, Detmers is back in the starting rotation and better than ever. He’s become one of the game’s elite speed-changers, with a fastball at 94 MPH, a changeup at 84, and a curveball at 73, with a sinker and slider mixed in for good measure. The change and curve are particularly effective; he’s just taking the sting out of hitters’ bats by making them cover a huge range of speeds and shapes. With two years of team control left after this year, he’s the kind of arm you could try to build a rotation around, and there’s a chance that the Angels will hold onto him. It’s hard to say whether that chance rose or fell when the team fired GM Perry Minasian. But these are the Angels, and if they keep Detmers beyond this year, he’ll start to get expensive. He’s never likely to have more trade value than he does this summer. You do the math.

Reid Detmers feels more like a Cub than does Skubal, anyway. He doesn't throw as hard, but he's still a lefty, and he comes with two years of team control Skubal doesn't have. That timeline means he could pitch alongside healthy versions of Horton, Cabrera, Brown, Justin Steele and more, if those pitchers ever are truly healthy again, and in the meantime, he would also bolster this team's chances to win a series or two in October. The cost would be as great as the cost of acquiring Skubal, but it would make more sense to pay that price for Detmers.

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Casey Mize, Tigers

RHP Age: 29 FA: Nov 2026 Sal: $6.15m

The first overall pick in the 2018 MLB Draft came into pro ball throwing strikes, and hasn’t stopped. However, injuries and the mysteries of pitching development have held him back in all bids to be the frontline starter the Tigers hoped they were getting with that selection. This year, he’s figured out the latter. He’s now missing bats like a high-end starter, with a pitch mix that has become exceptionally varied. Injuries haven’t stopped nagging and nipping at him, but he’s showing the feel and command that were supposed to make him an elite starter. That it’s happening amid a season in which the Tigers just can’t get untracked is deeply unfortunate, but that it’s happening at all gives the team a chance to cash him in for some real long-term value, rather than watching him leave for modest draft-pick compensation this winter.

If the team does end up defaulting to a rental starter, they could still get their shopping done in Detroit. They just need to do it on a budget. Casey Mize won't cost anywhere near what Skubal would. He could be had for a package headlined by Kevin Alcántara, whose stock is way down anyway, or by bundling a couple of half-promising lower-level pieces. He's a good mid-tier option to insure the team against outright collapse, which is still a very real threat right now. As well as they've played of late, they're still under .500 since the end of their 20-3 stretch in late April and early May, and the reasons why—some key hitters slumping, and the pitching staff ravaged by attrition—could easily rear up again on them in the final two months of the season. A starter in the Mize range is a need even to keep the team in good shape for a Wild Card berth. He'd be more about averting disaster than about chasing glory, but averting disaster could be this team's slogan, anyway.

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Eduardo Rodríguez, Diamondbacks

LHP Age: 33 FA: Nov 2027 Sal: $21m

Very much a get-you-there guy, Rodríguez will have fans of any acquiring team sweating bullets if he ends up starting a game in the postseason. He’s done so before, but the track record is poor, and he last appeared in October five years ago. His results look good this season, and there’s some genuine craftiness fueling his resurgence, but he’s not missing bats the way he did even in an ostensibly worse 2025. For teams who need a durable back-end starter and have cash to spend, though, he could be an interesting pickup. As the Diamondbacks circle the drain in the NL Wild Card race, they might be happy to get out from under another $25 million owed to Rodríguez after this season—so much so that they’d give him to the right buyer practically for free.

Finally, let's consider what the bare minimum looks like. As of Thursday morning, I rank Skubal No. 2 on the aforelinked trade candidates list; Detmers No. 5; and Mize No. 15. Eduardo Rodríguez ranks 62nd. His raw stuff is fading; he's smoke and mirrors. He's also expensive this year, and owed a bunch of money next year. He would be a kind of second David Peterson, and Peterson might even have more upside.

However, Rodríguez would also cost virtually nothing. That, plus the chance to pencil him in as a fifth or sixth starter on next year's team, makes him appealing in a way the other names discussed here aren't. The Diamondbacks are in no position to ask for a substantial prospect return, although they could get a little bit more by being willing to eat a chunk of the $6.5 million or so that will be left on his deal for 2026 by the deadline. He wouldn't be good enough to materially improve the Cubs' chances of doing anything in the playoffs, but he'd be almost as good a backstop for the rotation as Mize, and he'd come cheaper and with an extra year of control.

A Skubal trade would be splashy and sexy. It would also be a mistake. It's fair to say that the Cubs are heavily invested in 2026, financially and in terms of the timelines on their key players. Unimposing though he's been at the plate, Alex Bregman is unlikely to be better in any future year than he is right now, at age 32. Ditto for Dansby Swanson. Seiya Suzuki and Ian Happ will depart as free agents this winter, and the Cubs' farm system is thin. Those are reasons to wonder whether they'll be better in any of the next several years than they are right now. On the other hand, they're also reasons not to throw caution to the wind. There's still a chance that the team can be better than this, with sustained commitment to scouting and player development and with a bit better luck in the health department. They need to avoid annihilating that chance by swinging for the fences at this deadline; they're just not a good enough team to warrant taking that risk.