How the Dodgers Landed Tarik Skubal and Won the MLB Trade Deadline

The Los Angeles Dodgers won Major League Baseball's trading deadline earlier this week, if such a thing can be won like a World Series. And you probably won't find many opinions insisting otherwise.

It's true that a handful of other teams made strong deadline moves, like the Chicago Cubs, San Diego Padres and, in the seller's bracket, the San Francisco Giants. They all get A's. (The team known as the Athletics gets a D -- for Doing next to nothing.)

The Dodgers came away winners because the rest of the league let them add ace Tarik Skubal in a trade with the Detroit Tigers. He was the best player moved, giving the Dodgers a real shot in the left arm. As talented as their pitching staff is (as it always is), the Dodgers have genuine questions going into the final third of the regular season.

Their rotation is vulnerable in several spots following right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Two-way superman Shohei Ohtani is struggling to get through the regular season healthy enough to pitch on the regular. Roki Sasaki seems to be breaking through in a good way after his disastrous 2025, but we really need to see him perform in big games before getting comfortable with him on the mound with something at stake. Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell are tough to top as talents go, but they're also in the top percentile of fragility.

And the rest of the league just let the Dodgers steal the best insurance policy available. Not that the Tigers got fleeced with their return on Skubal. They received decent value in outfielder Zyhir Hope and right-hander River Ryan. But how about a little more inflation, like everywhere else in the economy?

The Milwaukee Brewers, probably more than any opponent, could have blocked the Dodgers by surrendering two of their own top prospects. Scared to commit and go for their first championship ever because it might deplete their engorged minor-league system, the Brewers failed big time by not meeting the moment and grabbing Skubal. Their last appearance in the World Series came in 1982, and it's not only the fault of teams in big markets or player salaries being uncapped.

No matter what you call them -- defenders of the Brewers' small-market extremism, general dislikers of the Dodgers, or bald-faced proponents of a salary cap, whiners will complain about the Dodgers having unfair advantages. And they do. Already the second-biggest TV market, the Dodgers have too sweet of a local deal, which MLB has done nothing to make fair after a lopsided bankruptcy ruling for previous owner Frank McCourt. Not to mention a general lack of existing revenue sharing among owners in the first place.

It looks a lot like the rest of MLB is being permissive with the Dodgers and other big-market teams on purpose to make conditions more favorable for owners to force a salary cap on the players in the coming lockout. Is that commissioner Rob Manfed's thumb on the scale? What a frame job, and not like the kind Dillon Dingler used to do for Skubal.

A cap is the only solution owners seem to be willing to pursue to lessen MLB's economic disparity. Meanwhile, the Dodgers have the deepest resources and the fewest excuses. And now they have Skubal.