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The only thing I can figure is that the Tigers forgot about the clause in arbitration that lets players with at least five years of service time compare themselves to free agents. So Skubal’s team can comp him to pitchers like Zack Wheeler ($42 million a year), Yoshinobu Yamamoto ($27 million a year) and Max Fried ($27 million a year), who have combined for no Cy Young Awards.
The other possibility is the Tigers tanked the process. I truly don’t know how you can walk into a room and tell a panel that Tarik Skubal, short of free agency by about ten weeks, winner of the last two AL Cy Young Awards, should get a little more than Jameson Taillon, or a little less than Luis Severino. My guess is it never gets to that, but this is the first hearing in a while that I’d pay to watch. “On three occasions, the player in question left a wet towel on the floor rather than toss it in the laundry cart. Moreover, he forgot to leave a tip on one of those awful touchscreens twice. Finally, he was tied for last in the majors in RBI. In conclusion, arbitration is a land of contrasts.”
