Tarik Skubal's response to Dodgers trade just won over all of Los Angeles

Before the Los Angeles Dodgers traded for Tarik Skubal, the ace southpaw said all the right things about wanting to stay and win in Detroit. He wanted to stay in Detroit and finish out the year. He pleaded with the Tigers to buy at the deadline. He pined to win a World Series.

While there are no real drawbacks to adding a two-time Cy Young winner to the fold, it's fair to have some apprehension as to how he'd adapt to being dealt to Los Angeles after that proclamation. Well, fear not; Skubal has spoken, and it's music to our ears.

“Every team could trade for me. I don’t sympathize with people that blame the Dodgers for anything they’ve done. It’s a winning org…I really don’t sympathize with people that are complaining because the Dodgers do all the right things,” Skubal said, per Jesse Rogers of ESPN

If you haven't scrolled through social media the last couple of days, then you may have missed the collective freak-out that fans, specifically those of the Milwaukee Brewers persuasion, have had after the Dodgers landed Skubal.

Tarik Skubal speaks the truth while shutting down Dodgers haters after the trade

There was whining that the package that Los Angeles gave up was light. There was consternation that no one else, specifically the small-market Brewers and Rays, two of Skubal's other top suitors, could afford to top the Dodgers' proposition. Never mind the fact that those two positions are diametrically opposed; the same people were hollering both complaints simultaneously.

Furthermore, the Dodgers got away paying what they did for Skubal because those two teams, plus other interested parties like the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies (big-market teams, mind you), decided not to push the issue and make competitive offers.

Brewers fans, in particular, bemoaned that their club couldn't pony up for a rental, no matter how good he happened to be. Losing the prospects would be so detrimental to their future, they claimed, that a couple of months of Skubal would set them back for years to come.

The Brewers actually did just that once in their history, trading for CC Sabathia at the 2008 trade deadline and watching him nearly single-handedly will them to the postseason with one of the greatest second-half performances of recent memory.

That iteration of the Brewers got bounced in the NLDS, and Sabathia was off the Bronx to win a World Series with the New York Yankees the following year. The Brewers endured two losing seasons before returning to playoff prominence in 2011, but the prospects they gave up for Sabathia had nothing to do with that.

What went back to Cleveland in the Sabathia deal was a package that included Matt LaPorta, Zach Jackson, Rob Bryson, and a PTBNL that became Michael Brantley. LaPorta finished his career with -1.3 fWAR. Jackson posted a 5.81 ERA over 105 1/3 career innings. Bryson never made it to the majors. Brantley, who was Milwaukee's No. 24 prospect at the start of 2008, had a solid career, but posted a combined -1.1 fWAR from 2009 through 2010, proving he'd have no impact on Milwaukee's two-year drought.

The point of the story is that the Brewers once pushed their chips into the center of the table, and they made the playoffs against all odds. Now, they're neck and neck with the Dodgers record-wise, but they weren't willing to do the one thing that could've set them apart and hurt Los Angeles in the process: trading for Skubal.

As the Sabathia example proves, the impact of losing top prospects is often overblown, especially if you draft and develop well.

The Dodgers are fantastic at finding and developing talent. The Brewers are, too. A club with that ability should then have the confidence that it can part with top prospects because it knows that it can always find and mold more. When you really consider what the bust rate is for even the very best prospects, you realize that at pendulum-shifting moments nothing should be off the table.

That has nothing to do with having an unlimited budget or deferring money into oblivion. Media market plays no role. Instead, it's about a dedication to scouting and player development to build a continuous pipeline, and having the guts to go out and take the big swing when it presents itself.

The Dodgers do that because they want to win more than anyone else. The other teams, like the Brewers, but also the Yankees, Rays, Phillies, and others in the Skubal chase, simply feared future losing more than they desired a present-day championship. Anyone can do what the Dodgers do; they just choose not to.

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