This huge (and serious) trade package could get Tarik Skubal from Tigers to Mariners

Earth to Seattle Mariners fans: If you're thinking the Detroit Tigers would trade Tarik Skubal to Seattle for a package centered on George Kirby, you're thinking too small.

Skubal mania has returned to the Pacific Northwest because ESPN's Jeff Passan had the audacity to label the back-to-back AL Cy Young Award winner as the best trade fit for the Mariners. This is even though they already have a loaded rotation, not to mention Skubal's pending free agency, $32 million salary and ongoing recovery from elbow surgery.

But Passan is right. If the Mariners are going to make it to their first ever World Series in 2026, they need as many good players as they can get. Skubal is the best one they can acquire this summer, and he'd solve the question of which pitcher would be the club's Game 1 starter.

The bigger catch concerns the acquisition cost. Without throwing anyone under the bus, the Kirby concept was a thing on social media on Thursday. The math of that hypothetical swap favors Seattle if you ask Baseball Trade Values, but trading for Skubal is not going to be about balancing an equation.

The Mariners will only get Tarik Skubal if they dig deep into their farm system for the good stuff

Back on May 22, FanSided's Robert Murray laid out three executives' assessments of Detroit's asking price on Skubal. Here's a selection of their quotes:

• Exec 1: "If I had to answer, I’d say one top-100 prospect plus a top-15 and one more throw in.”
• Exec 2: "Everyone else treats it like Wall Street and asset value so my guess is a couple of top 10 prospects for a couple months of him."
• Exec 3: “It’s so difficult to tell but I think it would start at one top-50 and another top-100 prospect."

This is spit-take stuff, but ask yourself: If you had Tarik Skubal and you had a chance to trade him, would you settle for anything less?

No, you wouldn't. And in this case, the Tigers figure to have their pick of dynamite packages, as you can rest assured that heavy hitters like the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees will also be involved on Skubal.

Thus we propose:

Along with Colt Emerson and Kade Anderson, Ryan Sloan is one of three Mariners prospects in Baseball America's top 10. Yet even if he may be the best pitching prospect in MLB, he should be less untouchable than Emerson (who's already in the majors) and Anderson (who is a candidate for a late 2026 debut).

Lazaro Montes is a well-regarded yet polarizing prospect. He's somewhere between a Yordan Alvarez and a Franmil Reyes, with Kyle Schwarber representing likely the happiest possible middle. Whatever the case, he's a top-100 prospect who could satisfy Detroit's ever-present need for power.

Mason Peters, meanwhile, has joined Anderson in instantly making the Mariners' 2025 draft class age well. He isn't top-100 material yet, but he's making headway in that direction.

We get it. Trade proposals like this are scary. And yes, the risk of offloading three very real prospects for a couple months of Skubal is greater than it would be for, say, the Dodgers or Yankees. They could at least hope to keep Skubal as a free agent. The Mariners can't.

But if we are going to talk about the Mariners trading for Skubal, it's important to be clear-eyed about the cost. And while the risk would be real, the potential reward of a World Series championship would be equally real.

That ultimately makes this conversation about one question for both the Mariners and the fanbase: How bad do you want it?

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