MILWAUKEE -- In an alternate timeline, one of the most highly anticipated pitching matchups isn’t opening the 2026 National League Championship Series.
If Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman doesn’t outbid the Brewers, among other clubs, for Tarik Skubal ahead of the Trade Deadline, the two-time defending World Series champions might very well be facing a 1-2 duo of Skubal and Jacob Misiorowski.
Instead, NL Cy Young front-runner Misiorowski will square off against reigning two-time AL Cy Young winner Skubal in Game 1 of the NLCS on Sunday at American Family Field.
“Obviously, that wouldn't be very fun to come in here and face Miz, then Skubal and the other guys the Brewers are going to roll out there,” Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy said. “It's a very good staff. Yeah, I'm very thankful they don't have a two-time Cy Young winner like Skoobs on that staff right now.”
Despite undergoing surgery to remove loose bodies in his left elbow and missing six weeks, pending free agent Skubal was easily the best pitcher on the market, and he had no shortage of suitors with varying degrees of need.
Friedman, motivated to go for just the fifth three-peat in Major League history, and the first since the Yankees’ dynasty (1998-2000), enticed the Tigers with a trio of prospects, including two on MLB Pipeline’s Top 100 list.
In doing so, Los Angeles kept one of the game’s top pitchers from other contenders while supplementing a rotation that already featured perennial MVP candidate Shohei Ohtani, two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell, 2025 World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow. Skubal also provided insurance since Snell, Glasnow and Ohtani have missed time due to injuries.
“Obviously that is a fact of it,” Friedman said following the trade. “It’s not part of our mindset. We’re doing what we can to put ourselves in the best position to have the strongest 26-man roster in October that we feel like gives us the best chance to win 11 games. And we know those teams are really good, we know that they’re going to add some players and be even better, and so we’re going to have our work cut out for us. But obviously first things first, we’re going to do what we can to accomplish our regular-season goal. I feel really good about the talent we have, and not just the talent but the makeup and how they’re wired to do everything we can to win that last game of the year.”
“I don’t know if ‘discouraging’ is the word,” Brewers outfielder Sal Frelick said at the time. “Obviously, no [other] guy like that is out there. But I don’t think anybody in this room is like, ‘We need something.’ Or like, ‘Please, please.’ No one feels that way. You know a guy like that could help any team that gets him, right? I don’t think anybody is too surprised where he ended up. That team gets a lot of those blockbusters.”
Milwaukee, which has reached the postseason in eight of the past nine years and has posted the Majors’ top regular-season record in the last two, had already lost Brandon Woodruff and Quinn Priester to season-ending injuries. A big splash like Skubal could’ve fortified the rotation with another ace.
After falling short in the sweepstakes, the Brewers pivoted by adding former Dodger Dustin May, along with relievers Antonio Senzatela and JoJo Romero.
From Aug. 4, when Skubal made his first start as a Dodger, through the end of the season, the Dodgers’ rotation accumulated the league’s highest fWAR (8.0), while the Brewers were 18th (2.9).
“Any time you're going after guys, there are probably other good teams also going after them,” Brewers president of baseball operations Matt Arnold said. “Probably not going to get into a ton of specifics around what that looked like, but yeah, the guy throwing against us tomorrow is really talented, and we faced him before, and we're going to have to be ready for it.
“Every team was looking to acquire good players at the Deadline, and ultimately they landed a really good one there in Tarik Skubal.”
So now the Brewers, who were swept by the Dodgers in last year’s NLCS, will have another frontline arm standing in the way of their first Fall Classic appearance since 1982. They have never won it all.
Last October, Milwaukee hit just .118 against the Dodgers -- the lowest average in any postseason series of at least three games -- and scored just four total runs, two of them against the starting quartet of Snell, Yamamoto, Glasnow and Ohtani in 28 2/3 innings. Ohtani won’t factor on the mound this time around, but Skubal will.
Although Skubal said he hadn’t really thought about how different things might’ve looked had he landed elsewhere, his new manager certainly has.
“It would look really different,” Dodgers skipper Dave Roberts said. “What [the Brewers] do, they had the best record in baseball. Certainly when you're talking about a seven-game series, to see Tarik on the other side would certainly -- the series would look a lot different.”