Dodgers should drop everything if insider's Tarik Skubal trade proposal holds weight

The Los Angeles Dodgers don’t need Tarik Skubal. That’s exactly why they should be begging the Tigers to take Jim Bowden’s trade proposal seriously.

Even after stockpiling frontline arms and winning the Roki Sasaki sweepstakes, Los Angeles is built on the simple modern truth that you can never have too much elite starting pitching. Drop a left-handed monster like Skubal on top of a rotation that already runs four aces deep, and you’re building yet another problem for the rest of baseball.

So when an insider like Bowden floats a framework built around Emmet Sheehan, Justin Wrobleski, Jackson Ferris and Zyhir Hope in The Athletic, it’s not hard to picture how the Dodgers would react if that offer actually moved the needle for Detroit. Andrew Friedman would be sprinting to the phone. For the Dodgers, this is exactly the sort of “painful but obvious” package you move in a heartbeat if it lands you one of the best pitchers on the planet with a year of control and a long-term megadeal still in play.

 Dodgers would race to accept Jim Bowden’s Tarik Skubal trade idea

It’s important to remember: this is a proposal, not a negotiation. There’s no indication the Tigers are dangling Skubal or that talks with the Dodgers have reached anything close to this level of specificity. It’s part of a larger, ongoing conversation about what it would even take to pry Skubal loose. That’s a key distinction, because when you look at what Skubal is right now, you understand why his name constantly lives in the “nice idea, not happening” bucket.

Skubal has pitched himself into that tiny tier of arms every front office dreams about and almost never trades. Back-to-back Cy Young Award seasons with a sub-3.00 ERA and more than 220 strikeouts have turned him into a true staff-carrying ace, the kind you pencil in for Game 1 of every October series and don’t think twice. It’s not hard to imagine his next contract pushing into the $400 million conversation if he keeps this up, and the Dodgers are one of the few organizations that could pay that bill.

From LA’s side, though, Bowden’s suggested package actually lines up with how they’re built to operate. Sheehan and Wrobleski are the headliners in the return — two young, major league-ready arms who have already logged real innings in Dodger blue and even taken on postseason work. Sheehan’s 2025 performance (a 2.82 ERA in 73 1/3 innings) is exactly the sort of production necessary here. Wrobleski, a lefty who broke through to the big leagues after time in Double-A and Triple-A, fits the mold of a mid-rotation starter who could stick around for a while.

Ferris and Hope give the package its upside. Ferris, acquired in the Michael Busch deal back in 2024, has the kind of stuff that screams future big-league starter if the command continues to come along. Hope might be the loudest lottery ticket of the bunch — an outfielder with real power-and-speed juice who was already pushing his way to Double-A by the end of the 2025 season. For most teams, that’s a franchise-changing group of young talent. For the Dodgers, it’s the cost of doing business when you’re in an all-in championship window and you trust your scouting and development pipeline to keep refilling the cupboard.

From the Tigers’ perspective, though, this is where things get complicated. On paper, adding multiple near-ready starters plus a high-ceiling position player is exactly how a mid-market club insulates itself for the long haul. In reality, you’re asking Detroit to move a homegrown ace in his prime just as the team has shown it can actually compete deep into a season. You don’t casually give up back-to-back seasons of dominance at the front of your rotation for a package that might never produce a player as good as the one you just shipped out. It’s no surprise that plenty of fans — and more than a few analysts — are skeptical the Tigers would even entertain it.

For Detroit, Bowden’s suggested package is a strong start, but it probably still isn’t enough to justify tearing Skubal out of the top of the rotation after a strong 2025 run. For Los Angeles, it’s the kind of offer you make before the Tigers can even finish their sentence. If this is anywhere close to the price, the Dodgers should — and absolutely would — sprint to the front of the line and shove their chips in. The real question isn’t whether LA would do it. It’s whether the Tigers are willing to find out just how far the Dodgers would go for one more ace.