Tarik Skubal Won His Arbitration Case And Was Awarded A Record $32M Salary For This Season, As The Tigers Low Ball Offer Was Laughed At

Dilip Vishwanat. Getty Images.

Baseball arbitration is a silly, archaic system to determine salaries for a player's 3rd through 6th year in the big leagues. Most of the time the player and team come to an agreement on their own and avoid any further hassle. A few players each year typically won't budge off their number and head to court where a judge will determine who is right and wrong. There's no middle ground option when you reach that point. They're choosing one of the two numbers and that's that. Teams love to shoot themselves the foot here and bring up reasons the player doesn't deserve the number, leading to some bad blood. Guys have been told they were the main reason a team lost in the playoffs and the season ended in failure. Obviously those words stay with the player and sometimes ruin future negotiations down the road. If teams are smart they do whatever they can to avoid arbitration and come to an agreement before the judge gets involved. 

Usually the gap between the two sides ranges from low six figures to a couple million at most, but this year two time reigning Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal and the Detroit Tigers found themselves a record $13M apart this time around, promptly sending them towards a hearing. 

Now here's the thing about arbitration. A player does not get what his market value would be if he was a free agent. You more or less get a number comparable to someone of your abilities when they went through the same process, as well as an appropriate raise from your previous year's number. With that being said, the Tigers throwing out $19M as their number was incredibly insulting. It's almost like they didn't know the rules and thought the judge could land the final payout somewhere in the middle. The previous record for a pitcher here was $19.75M given by the Tigers to David Price back in 2015. So they basically said they have the same value. 

Skubal and his reps relied on "a seldom-used provision in arbitration that allows players with five-plus years of service and so-called "special accomplishment" -- back-to-back Cy Youngs qualify -- to compare their salaries not just to those in the arbitration system but all major league players, Skubal built his case around starting-pitching salaries that have exceeded $40 million." (ESPN). I would hope they also took a page out of Tim Lincecum's playbook. 

A team normally would be worried about pissing off their player during these negotiations, but the Tigers likely have accepted that Skubal will not be part of the team after the 2026 season concludes with how far apart their extension talks were prior to this. Skubal decided to aim high with his number and had MLBPA deputy executive director Bruce Meyer spearhead his side of the talks to the judge. With the hearing yesterday, a decision was expected shortly after. In the mean time the Tigers decided to dish out a cool $115M to 32 year old, noted asshole teammate Framber Valdez. This is the guy who had to send around a 20 minute video to teams explaining that he's actually a good fella, contrary to what everyone else believes. 

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I'm not entirely sure when the judge came to his conclusion, but that getting announced before the arb decision came out was curious timing. I'm aware Skubal isn't getting market value here, but you offer up $19M for him while handing FRAMBER VALDEZ $38M AAV? That's hilarious. 

Well, in the end Skubal won in what was a monumental victory for the MLBPA. 

The Tigers clearly leaned on precedent in hopes for their $19M to be chosen as the winning number here. You gotta think if they go to $25M instead they probably win and save some cash/face in the process. The MLBPA should be thanking the Tigers for that insanely low ball offer because it ended up with them rewriting the way arb goes down moving forward. I wonder how much higher Skubal could have upped his number. If he writes down $38M does that win with how low the Tigers came in with? 

Arbitration will likely be revamped, if not done away with entirely when the CBA gets rewritten in the offseason, but good for Skubal for getting his here. I'm still not sold on their offense, but Detroit's rotation is easily one of the best in the American League right now. That is until they start fielding legitimate trade offers for Skubal in the summer…