last thing I want to say about Tigers/Skubal/Dodgers:
I've been frustrated with the discourse on this because I don't think a lot of people understand how the Brewers operate, but also because a lot of the people that SHOULD understand have thrown it all out the window in favor of bashing the Brewers for fun. figured I'd rant about it one last time.
the below screenshots are taken from Adam McCalvy's MLB.com Brewers Beat newsletter (highly recommend):
the Brewers offered enough for him. they truly did try their best. I am 99% sure of this. sometimes the other team's offer just matches up better with what the seller wants; sometimes the seller is just going to make a decision that everyone else thinks is weird. here I think it is a bit of both...
our initial offer was Peña, Williams/Adamczewski, a fringe top 100...Frias? Fischer? who knows. if this is true, from everything I know about our prospects, this is an INCREDIBLE package. this is us going for it! (and this means later offers went UP from here!)
but that doesn't mean that the Tigers see it that way. they may not think it meets their needs in the same way as the Dodgers package. maybe they have Hope rated highly so an OF means more to them than our SS. maybe they love River Ryan, whose ability level is pretty polarizing.
anyways they most likely wanted and asked for Logan Henderson, and that is a great place to draw the line. we CANNOT give up our current third best starter with, like, 5 years of team control for 3 months of Skubal.
THAT is the thing that Dodgers fans and sports writers (and the Angels broadcast??) fail to understand when they cry "Brewers are just cheap"—especially the Dodgers fans who are saying this shit so that they can feel less like the big bad—the risk and the loss are entirely different for us. I've seen writers that I (no longer!) respect saying stuff like "it's the Brewers' fault, they were prospect hoarding"—this WAS us going for it. we offered SO MUCH. we stopped when the cost became legitimately untenable. the Brewers are not rich on pitching prospects, so the cost became someone who we could not afford to lose.
the Dodgers can afford to offer any prospect because they can sign anyone to replace them; they already have a stacked starting rotation, so giving up Ryan was not a loss to it. if we gave up Henderson, we permanently lose a current piece of our starting rotation. this year AND in the future! that doesn't even make us better than the Dodgers right now. that's counterintuitive to us going for Skubal in the first place!
did the idea of a Misiorowski/Skubal/Harrison rotation sound like an absolute dream? yes. but it sounds like we offered an absolutely massive package for Skubal and it doesn't match what the Tigers wanted.
(would I be surprised if the Tigers saw two relatively equal packages and said, well just give him to the Dodgers let's get a cap? absolutely fucking not haha)
anyways! we've got better shit to worry about than this. fuck the Dodgers, go Brewers, please beat the Pirates just so I know you're capable of that, etc.
