LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles Dodgers did not complete their deadline on Saturday night when they (who else?) swung yet another megadeal to acquire two-time Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal from the Detroit Tigers.They just acquired the only player they identified as a true deadline target.“It was Skubal or nothing, essentially,” manager Dave Roberts said Sunday afternoon, uncovering what had been a month of downplaying and sandbagging from the Dodgers’ brass about acquiring him.Skubal was the target, and the rental represented the only true difference-maker on the open market for a Dodgers roster seeking its third consecutive title.Andrew Friedman discusses Tarik Skubal acquisition. Fabian Ardaya“Whenever there’s a star-level player that is available that can really shift championship odds, those are the moments that we’ll be more aggressive,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said Sunday afternoon in the afterglow of the move.Computer tabulations still don’t guarantee it. This is the same Dodgers team that was on the brink of elimination in the 2024 NLDS and the 2025 World Series. But the numbers bear it out. Before acquiring Skubal, FanGraphs gave the Dodgers 25.7 percent odds of winning the World Series. As of Sunday afternoon, those odds bumped up to 30.4 percent. That is a meaningful difference.That difference meant Skubal was worth the risks. He is 88 days removed from surgery to remove a loose body from his left elbow, and is on the brink of what is expected to be a record-setting free-agent deal. While the Dodgers did not surrender any of their top three prospects in the deal, they run the risk of Zyhir Hope tapping into his supreme upside as a corner outfielder, or River Ryan catching a run of health and morphing into a top-line starter, or Brady Smith becoming the Yordan Alvarez-esque flier that comes back to bite them.