The consensus best pitcher in Major League Baseball could be traded this winter, and that will grab the attention of fans of big-market teams far and wide.
Detroit Tigers ace Tarik Skubal seems to be looking for light-years more in a long-term contract than his team is trying to offer, He’ll be a free agent in a year, and on Saturday, The Athletic’s Will Sammon came out with a report that indicated there was at least a decent chance the reigning Cy Yougng Award winner will be traded.
It’s only natural for Boston Red Sox enthusiasts to be intrigued about the idea of pairing Skubal with Garrett Crochet to create a super-rotation. But then, we come to a crucial part of Sammon’s report: the potential asking price.
What Red Sox might have to offer for Skubal (hint: it’s a lot)
“One industry source unaffiliated with the club speculated Detroit may look to ask for two top-level starting pitchers and a position player prospect,” Sammon wrote. “In Mets parlance, that means something like (Jonah) Tong, (Brandon) Sproat and prospect Jett Williams.
Tong and Sproat are two of the Mets’ top three pitching prospects, with the third, righty Nolan McLean, likely in the untouchables category.
So, the Red Sox equivalent of the trade would probably look something like this:
Red Sox receive: SP Tarik Skubal
Tigers receive: SP Connelly Early, SP Payton Tolle, OF Jhostynxon Garcia
Maybe the Red Sox could talk their way into keeping either Early or Tolle if they swapped in left-hander Brandon Clarke and upgraded the position player in the deal from Garcia to infielder Franklin Arias. But the bottom line is that trading for Skubal would likely gut the farm system.
This is nothing like the Crochet situation last offseason. The odds of getting Skubal to sign an extension before he hits free agency next winter are next to zero. He’s about to win his second Cy Young Award, and it’s already being whispered that he wants a $400 million contract.
And even if the Red Sox are truly re-entering their big-market bully phase, it’s awfully hard to imagine them paying more than double Crochet’s price tag for a single pitcher.
So although we won’t shut down the idea completely, it seems impractical to hope that the Red Sox would pay such a hefty prospect price for Skubal, and if they did, it might prove to be a massive mistake after just one year.
