{"id":97260,"date":"2025-03-12T15:06:48","date_gmt":"2025-03-12T19:06:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=97260"},"modified":"2025-06-28T13:27:41","modified_gmt":"2025-06-28T17:27:41","slug":"tigers-tarik-skubal-contract-extension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/03\/12\/tigers-tarik-skubal-contract-extension\/","title":{"rendered":"Tarik Skubal Likely to Secure Major Contract Extension with Tigers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Coming off a unanimous American League Cy Young Award win, Detroit Tigers ace Tarik Skubal could sign the largest contract extension in franchise history. A potential trade candidate at last year\u2019s deadline, <\/span>Tarik Skubal<\/span> helped lead a late-season surge that sent the Tigers to their first postseason in 10 years. Now, the reigning American League Cy Young winner<\/a> is estimated to receive a record-breaking <\/span>seven-year, $200 million<\/span><\/a> contract extension, per The Athletic’s Tim Britton.<\/span><\/p>\n

Skubal finished last season with 18 wins, a 2.39 ERA and 228 strikeouts, becoming the first Triple Crown pitcher since Shane Bieber in 2020. He and Chris Sale were the first Triple Crown winning pitchers since Justin Verlander and Clayton Kershaw won in 2011. A first-time All-Star, Skubal led the American League with a 170 ERA+ and 2.50 FIP, while leading the majors with a 6.3 WAR. After avoiding arbitration with a one-year, $10.15 million contract for 2025, the 28-year-old could reach free agency in 2026. While Detroit rarely comments publicly on contract negotiations, the Tigers have reportedly discussed a long-term contract extension with Skubal\u2019s team.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tarik Skubal Expected to Sign Largest Extension in Franchise History<\/h2>\n

Skubal is represented by Scott Boras who generally prefers taking his clients to free agency over signing long-term contract extensions. Despite having reportedly declined an extension offer in the past, Boras seems open to negotiating a long-term deal with Detroit, for the right price of course. Considering how little money Detroit has on their books, signing Skubal to a record-breaking deal could be money well spent.<\/span><\/p>\n

Skubal is making roughly $10 million this year and could make $16 million in 2026, setting a new arbitration record. Detroit gave Justin Verlander the largest extension in franchise history, signing him to a seven-year, $180 million deal in 2013. Verlander was two years older than Skubal is and also had eight seasons under his belt compared to Skubal\u2019s five. On paper, the two aces are relatively similar. Both have won a Cy Young Award, ERA title, and a Triple Crown before signing an extension. <\/span>Skubal owns a 3.37 career ERA so far, compared to Verlander’s 3.40 ERA over his first eight seasons.<\/span><\/p>\n

Clayton Kershaw signed the largest contract extension for a pitcher in the majors, a seven-year, $215 million deal in 2014. Kershaw, 26 at the time, was coming off his second Cy Young season and his third consecutive ERA title. The Dodgers\u2019 southpaw had an ERA of 2.60 over his first six seasons, including five consecutive sub-3.00 seasons. His $30.7 million average annual value, once the largest ever for a baseball player, currently seems steep for Skubal. Kershaw pitched five full seasons for the Dodgers before his extension, meanwhile elbow surgery has limited Skubal to just two. Not saying Skubal will not one day be worth $30 million, it is hard to see Detroit making that deal.<\/span><\/p>\n

How Much is Detroit Willing to Spend to Extend Their Ace?<\/h3>\n

With Boras as his agent, any extension deal the Tigers offer Skubal will likely have to start with a two. A seven-year, $200 million extension would give him a higher average annual value than Verlander, but less than Kershaw. Extending Skubal through his age-34 season would allow the Tigers to make a postseason run for more than two years. Whether the notoriously cheap franchise will offer Skubal a significant extension remains to be seen. <\/span>The longer they wait, the closer he gets to joining Verlander and Kershaw<\/a> as one of the highest-paid pitchers in MLB history.<\/span><\/p>\n

Main Photo: \u00a9 Junfu Han \/ USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coming off a unanimous American League Cy Young Award win, Detroit Tigers ace Tarik Skubal could sign the largest contract extension in franchise history. A potential trade candidate at last year\u2019s deadline, Tarik Skubal helped lead a late-season surge that sent the Tigers to their first postseason in 10 years. Now, the reigning American League […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4975,"featured_media":97296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1071],"tags":[97,247,3082],"class_list":["post-97260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tigers","category-mlb","tag-clayton-kershaw","tag-justin-verlander","tag-tarik-skubal"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4975"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97260"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97297,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97260\/revisions\/97297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}