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.