On Skubal, arbitration and the aftermath

This story was excerpted from Jason Beck’s Tigers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

Barring a surprise trade, Tarik Skubal will show up at Spring Training in Lakeland, Fla., in a few weeks and then pitch for the Tigers on Opening Day on March 26 in San Diego. The only real debate at this point is how much money he will make in doing so.

For all the hand-wringing about the Tigers and Skubal heading toward a salary arbitration hearing in the coming days, for all the rhetoric about the salary offers the two sides exchanged or the level of negotiations, the status of the back-to-back American League Cy Young Award winner has not changed. He’s still a Tiger, and an arbitration ruling seems unlikely to change that.

A $13 million gap in salary proposals ($19 million vs. $32 million) doesn’t mean Skubal is going to be traded. If anything, the vast difference in potential salary potentially makes it a tougher trade, as rival executives told colleague Mark Feinsand last week. At a time in the offseason when teams are setting payrolls and usually getting close to final budgets, a $13 million gap is a level of uncertainty that teams generally don’t like this close to the season.

Conversely, a potential record arbitration salary is unlikely to put the Tigers in a position where they have to trade him for a reduced return. Teams that could potentially make a move for Skubal have turned in other directions, from the Mets’ trade for Freddy Peralta to the Red Sox signing Ranger Suárez to the Rangers’ trade for MacKenzie Gore. Add in Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman’s comment to reporters this week that they are not in the market for more starting pitching, and the teams with the potential interest, aggressiveness and prospect depth to make a compelling trade offer for Skubal at this late stage of the offseason have dwindled.

If history is any indication, an arbitration hearing is unlikely to have much impact on the Tigers’ chances of signing Skubal to a contract extension, or re-signing him in free agency next offseason.

Two years ago, the same worries surrounded the Blue Jays in their arbitration hearing with slugger Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who was coming off a 1.8 bWAR season. Their gap was smaller than what the Tigers face with Skubal -- Guerrero filed at $19.9 million, compared with $18.05 million for the Jays -- but the case was closely followed two years out from Guerrero’s potential free agency. An arbitration panel sided with Guerrero, setting a record for highest salary awarded from an arbitration hearing.

The Blue Jays made their case, but did so while remaining mindful of maintaining a good relationship in hopes of keeping the door open for a long-term deal later.

“I don’t argue the case [before the arbitrator],” general manager Ross Atkins later told reporters, including MLB.com Blue Jays beat reporter Keegan Matheson, “and we have very little to do with it other than ... pulling out things that we feel are personal. That was our say in it ...

“A very, very large portion of the work is done by a professional attorney, and then what we work on is ensuring that nothing is personal, and we feel nothing will be taken in a way that is anything other than professional.”

The Blue Jays and Guerrero avoided arbitration the following winter with a one-year, $28.5 million contract ahead of the deadline to exchange numbers. Three months later, the Blue Jays announced a 14-year, $500 million contract extension for Guerrero. That arbitration case was a distant memory.

Yes, the Blue Jays’ arbitration hearing with Guerrero came a year earlier in the process than what the Tigers and Skubal potentially face now. But both Skubal, a member of the MLB Players Association’s executive committee, and the Tigers know the business, and how to separate it from matters on the field.

No, it’s not ideal. There’s a reason the Tigers avoided arbitration cases going to hearings for years, including the $19.75 million salary for David Price in 2015 that remains the record salary for an arbitration-eligible pitcher. But it also doesn’t necessarily mean a severed relationship or an imminent departure.