From now until he signs a piece of paper in the winter, Tarik Skubal’s elbow is going to be the most talked-about ligament in baseball. As the past couple of days have shown.
The Detroit Tigers ace found himself clearing the air Thursday after a discourse outbreak around his decision to not undergo an MRI last offseason, which could have revealed an issue in his elbow at a more convenient time. Instead, he underwent a novel treatment for loose bodies in May and missed a month and a half.
In comments to The Athletic’s Cody Stavenhagen published Wednesday, Skubal recalled feeling like “something was wrong” in his pitching elbow in January. He said he chose to ignore the symptoms rather than undergo the MRI.
And then he threw in a shot at the more notable story from his offseason, the Tigers’ decision to take him to an arbitration hearing to determine his salary for 2026:
“If I could go back, I probably should have got an MRI in January and hammered it out to where I was done with it in the offseason,” Skubal said. “But there were also other factors in play. I was going through arbitration. The decision by the organization to take me to court, I think that probably had some impact subconsciously.”
Arbitration hearings are rare in MLB these days, with Skubal’s one of only 10 seen across the league last winter. This one wound up being lucrative for him, with the arbitrator choosing his $32 million number over the Tigers’ $19 million.
That was a record gulf between player and team, and Skubal clearly wasn’t happy with the situation. Suggesting that he was so mad at the Tigers that he decided to play things by ear with his elbow, though, wound up generating enough attention that he addressed the matter again while speaking with reporters Thursday.
This time, he suggested an MRI was never really in play:
“I thought that we were trending in the right direction throughout this whole process. I had a hiccup in January that I didn’t know what was going on. I thought it was just a different soreness. I had never dealt with anything like that before. We were trending the right way. That’s the reason there was no MRI, there was no discussion of an MRI.
“We were trending the right way. I continued to make starts and I continued to be a good player. I felt like I was doing a good job. I had that incident in Atlanta and the next two days weren’t great. That’s when I decided to have an MRI and have a surgery. That whole thing was blown out of proportion. A lot of it was not true and not factual, me denying an MRI.”
This is the kind of stuff that apparently comes up when a two-time reigning Cy Young Award winner is the biggest chip of the MLB trade deadline, on a team that has shifted from moribund to competitive.
Tarik Skubal missed significant time earlier this season with an elbow injury.
(Ryan Sun via Getty Images)
The Tigers are still multiple games out of a wild-card spot and are not expected to retain Skubal this offseason. Trading Skubal would net them immense prospect capital and/or real MLB contributors with more years of control.
When asked if his start Friday could be his final home start at Comerica Park, Skubal conceded it was very possible:
“That might be reality, a little bit, but also five days later is another one at home. I don’t know the rotation or how that shakes out … That’ll set in when it needs to set in, not right now.
The Tigers have nine games remaining until the trade deadline on Aug. 3.
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