Tarik Skubal's injury (mostly) wrecks Mariners' dreams of what could have been

Just imagine if the Mariners had given up multiple top prospects in a trade for Tarik Skubal, only to get seven starts out of him before he needed elbow surgery. That would have sucked, and at least half of this concept is no longer purely hypothetical.

As the Tigers announced on Monday, the back-to-back AL Cy Young Award winner indeed needs surgery on his left elbow. He's having loose bodies removed, which is likely to keep him out for several months.

Just like that, all those offseason rumors and whispers about the Mariners making a play on Skubal hit different. They were never that believable, but the steady flow of them kept us on the edges of our seats precisely because such a trade was, in theory, possible.

Even with only one season standing between him and free agency, Detroit's theorized asking price for Skubal was said to be two or three top-100 prospects. The Mariners had plenty of those, and they ended up trading two of them (Harry Ford and Jurrangelo Cijntje) throughout the winter.

Did the Mariners need Skubal that badly? On paper, not really. But the logic in favor of trading for him was as simple as him being the best player they could have acquired. And if nothing else, having him would have resulted in a clear answer to a question that hasn't had one for a while: Who even is Seattle's No. 1 starter?

What Mariners fans must remember before being grateful Tarik Skubal trade never happened

Cut to now, one feels comfortable hazarding a guess that nobody in the Pacific Northwest is celebrating the news of Skubal's surgery.

Even if he wasn't a Seattle University alum, he's one of those guys who commands respect as both a person and as a pitcher. He's just easy to root for, and the Mariners beating him four times last year is one of those things where you don't know how they got away with it.

And besides, even if the Mariners avoided surrendering multiple top prospects — and paying a $32 million salary, to boot — are we so sure that not trading for Skubal has been confirmed as a bullet dodged?

His season isn't over, after all, and surgery to clean out loose bodies is hardly the worst operation a pitcher can have. Edwin Díaz just had the same surgery, and he's already feeling good and confident that he'll regain the velocity he had been missing. As his own fastball velo was down by 1 mph from 2025, Skubal is surely hoping he'll be able to say the same.

Even if it was the Mariners lamenting Skubal's surgery right now, there would still be a real hope of him returning to be a force to be reckoned with in the playoffs. The Mariners lacked one of those in their rotation last October, and who would be their Game 1 starter this year is as iffy a question as the one concerning their No. 1 starter, period.

So no, this particular "What if?" isn't up in smoke just yet. It's taken a turn, but let's hold off on a final accounting until the last pitch of 2026 is thrown. If it's not to the Mariners' benefit, this could absolutely be a topic worth revisiting.

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