A few weeks ago, this looked settled. Tarik Skubal was going to get traded: the only question on Kalshi was where. Now that the Detroit Tigers are winning, and the market is arguing with itself. Will Tarik Skubal get traded?
Skubal is still the best pitcher in baseball. Two-time defending AL Cy Young winner, a fastball in the high 90s, a changeup nobody squares up. None of that has changed. What's changed is Detroit's record, and that's flipped the whole conversation on its head.
Detroit's Turnaround Nobody Saw Coming
Back in early June, the Tigers were buried, and a trade felt like a formality. Then they started winning.
Detroit has gone 25-15 since the start of June. They're still six games under .500, but in a soft American League, that's enough to put them 4½ games out of a wild-card spot, even with five teams still ahead of them.
That stretch has done more than pad the record. It's changed how rival front offices talk about Skubal.
The growing sense around the league now, according to ESPN, is that the Tigers hold onto him past the deadline and take their shot at a playoff run, with one condition: they have to keep winning. "Now, it's at least a debate," is how ESPN summed up the shift from where things stood a month ago.
Skubal Is Making His Own Case
Whatever Detroit decides, Skubal isn't giving them a reason to sell.
He missed six weeks after a procedure to clear a bone chip from his throwing elbow, and he's come back throwing as hard as ever. Over 14 starts this year he's 6-5 with a 2.83 ERA, a 0.93 WHIP, and 98 strikeouts in 82⅔ innings. His outing against the Angels on July 18 was the best of the bunch: seven shutout innings, nine strikeouts.
That lines up with what he's done the last two seasons. He led MLB in strikeouts and bWAR in 2024, then racked up 241 strikeouts last year while leading AL pitchers in both ERA and bWAR.
What the Market Is Actually Saying
On Kalshi, the market for whether Skubal gets traded at all before the deadline was sitting above 70% a few weeks back. It's since dropped under 50%, tracking Detroit's climb in the standings.
Los Angeles Dodgers, long considered the runaway favorite to land him, are no longer running away with anything. On Kalshi's market for his next team, the Dodgers have slipped to 28%.
The Dodgers, for their part, don't look desperate. Their rotation is banged up: Ohtani is shut down from pitching, and both Glasnow and Snell are hurt, but rival evaluators still think LA matches up better with Detroit's farm system than anyone else, thanks to a stockpile of outfield prospects the Tigers actually need.
Back in June, after a win over Tampa Bay, Skubal shrugged off the noise with a simple line: "With all the trade stuff, we just got to start winning games." Turns out that's exactly what happened. Whether it's enough to keep him in Detroit past August 3 is still anyone's guess.
