The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic’s daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox.Good morning! Chris is off this week, but we’ve got familiar faces lined up to pinch hit. Today:
Conundrums: A deadline crossroads like no other One week from the MLB trade deadline, the Detroit Tigers are facing one of the toughest deadline decisions ever, in any sport. Whatever they do could be a disaster.Tarik Skubal is one of the best pitchers of his generation. The big lefty has won the last two American League Cy Young Awards. He missed a month and a half earlier this season after having surgery for loose bodies in his elbow, but now the 29-year-old is back and looks like, well, Skubal. His past two starts: 14 1/3 innings, 21 strikeouts, two walks, no homers, 1 run.He’s also a free agent in a few months, and the Tigers at turns look like legit contenders and a team that will miss the postseason. There’s a lot going on here:
The best pitchers in baseball will likely be worth somewhere between two and three wins above replacement in August and September. That doesn’t guarantee the Tigers would lose that much value by trading Skubal, because even the great ones are subject to injury risk and down stretches. Skubal was worth 1.2 FanGraphs WAR from August onward last year, for example — really good, but not a peak stretch for him.
