On Wednesday, while the Tigers were engaged in the traditional approach to building a team—that is, trying to crush their homegrown star in salary arbitration—they were also busy getting to work on the hot new approach: getting a free agent to take a gigantic, short-term deal to turn them into a championship contender.
Detroit lost its case against double-reigning American League Cy Young Award-winning lefty Tarik Skubal and will pay him an arbitration-record $32 million this year, rather than the $19 million the team proposed. Employing him at all still counts as a win. So does what the Tigers negotiated with his new rotation mate, the best pitcher on the market, 32-year-old Framber Valdez: a three-year, $115 million deal with an opt-out after two years. That $38.3 million average annual value marks a new record for a left-handed pitcher, topping Blake Snell’s $36.4 million with the Dodgers.
