Tarik Skubal has to be one of MLB’s all-time best bargains.
Being selected as the starting pitcher for the American League squad for the 95th MLB All-Star Game by manager Aaron Boone, in all likelihood, wasn’t a difficult decision.
When baseball gets back to business on Friday, with the season’s second half getting underway, Skubal and his fellow Detroit Tigers will begin playing the final 65 regular-season games of their schedule. Starting off this weekend’s road series with the Texas Rangers in Arlington, Texas, momentum is on Detroit’s side. With a 59–38 record, the Tigers not only led the American League Central by 11.5 games over second-place Minnesota, they also boast of having the best win-loss record in baseball.
Leading the Tigers’ winning way is Skubal. His “Ace” status of the club’s pitching staff this season is a continuation of his incredible 2024 performance. When the last postseason game was recorded, and individual awards were focused on, Skubal was front and center in the talk of 2024 pitching. The five-year pro won the American League Cy Young Award, and perhaps most impressive was Skubal championing hitters to the tune that he earned the Triple Crown. Leading the league in wins, strikeouts, and earned run average all in the same season is quite a feat. Rare in that a pitcher has been so dominating throughout a full season, since 2011, other than Skubal’s capturing the title last season, only four other pitchers have reached Triple Crown status.
So far, as hard as it is to believe for many, Skubal is performing at the same high level in 2025 as last season, which has him flashing signs of repeating his Triple Crown statistics. In 121 innings of work at the All-Star break, Skubal has run up 153 strikeouts. Throw in a 10–3 record, a 2.23 ERA, and giving up only nine home runs in 19 games started, Skubal remains well in control of where his pitches are going. His changeup and four-seam fastball, averaging 98 mph, has batters baffled. Add his sinker/slider pitches, and it’s not a complete surprise why Skubal is the least favorite hurler opposing teams want to stare down from a batter’s box.
With Detroit winning a World Series championship last in 1984 and an American League pennant in 2012, Tigers’ fans are restless for another victory parade in Kennedy Square on Woodward Avenue.
As Skubal goes, so do the Tigers. There was a time when Skubal wasn’t thought of as the leader of the Tigers’ staff, let alone the most feared starting pitcher among American League clubs. Drafted in 2018, after being signed by Tigers’ Northwest area scout Dave Dangler, Skubal was taken in the ninth round (225th overall). Accepting a signing bonus of $350,000, this is a “steal” for an MLB draftee. The Tigers’ top draft selection in 2018, pitcher Casey Mize, signed for a $7.5 million bonus. Three years pitching at Seattle University, garnering 21 victories at NCAA Division-1 level, interested the Tigers enough to take a gamble on the relatively unknown Arizonan.
The confidence shown in Skubal by Detroit skipper A.J. Hinch continues to pay dividends. After only appearing in eight games for the Tigers during the pandemic-shortened 2020 MLB season, the following season, Skubal earned a roster spot for the Opening Day roster. Finishing at 1–4 and a 5.63 ERA in 2020, Skubal’s work could only have improved.
Four years later, after improving steadily, by 2024, Skubal was the face of the Tigers. A record of 18–4, an ERA of 2.39, and 228 strikeouts earned in 31 games, Skubal became the talk of MLB baseball. Tigers’ management has made roster trades and transactions with hopes of the club going deeper in the postseason, come this fall. Last season, at 86–76, finishing 6.5 games behind the American League Central champions Cleveland Guardians, Detroit qualified for the 2024 Wild Card Series, best-of-three games. The Tigers swept the Houston Astros and advanced to the American League Division Series, opposing the Guardians. Detroit was eliminated in five games.
The Tigers, now in the franchise’s 125th season, not only need to remain focused on maintaining a lead over their divisional foes, but must, if they haven’t already, concentrate on locking up Skubal contractually. Keeping Skubal in a Tigers’ uniform isn’t going to come cheap. He is under club control through the end of the 2026 season, then Skubal would be eligible for free agency. To avoid arbitration, this past January, Skubal signed a one-year deal to remain with Detroit.
Coming from Kingman, Arizona, in his wildest dreams growing up in the Mojave Desert, approximately 100 miles south of Las Vegas, Skubal couldn’t have fathomed his rise to superstardom at the game’s highest level. Already, Skubal’s name is associated with other all-time Tigers’ pitching greats Mickey Lolich, Denny McLain, and National Baseball Hall of Famer Hal Newhouser. McLain, in 1968, arguably enjoyed the single greatest season any pitcher in MLB history has experienced. In 1968, the season that Detroit captured the World Series championship, McLain won the American League Cy Young Award, the MVP, amassed a 31–6 record, and was selected to the American League All-Star team. Skubal has shown that he has the skills to duplicate McLain’s success of 1968.
As long as he remains healthy, and his left arm powers through batters the second half of the season as he did prior to this week’s All-Star Game break, Skubal shows no limits on how dominating he could be through September. The Tigers’ lineup hasn’t shown any hints of being offensively deficient. Calling Comerica Park home now for 25 seasons, Skubal could be the deciding reason the Tigers’ silver anniversary on Woodward Avenue could turn out to also include a jubilee in October, not experienced in four decades.
