As Detroit’s former ace chases a title in Los Angeles, conflicted supporters must decide whether to cheer for their homegrown star or resent the powerhouse that acquired him.
There probably will not be a Detroit Tigers game on television Saturday afternoon, but plenty of Tigers fans will have a reason to watch baseball anyway.
Tarik Skubal is starting Game 1 of the National League Division Series for the Los Angeles Dodgers against the Atlanta Braves.mThat sentence still sounds a little strange.
Only two months ago, Skubal was the face of the Tigers pitching staff and one of the best pitchers Detroit had developed in decades. Now, the two-time American League Cy Young Award winner will take the ball for the defending champions as they pursue another World Series title. For Tigers fans, that creates an interesting question.
Who exactly are you rooting for? There are probably several answers, and none of them are necessarily wrong.
Some Tigers fans undoubtedly will be rooting for Skubal. He spent seven seasons in Detroit, developed from a ninth-round draft pick into an ace and became one of the most dominant starting pitchers in baseball while wearing a Tigers uniform.
Even after Detroit traded him, there was little reason for that appreciation to immediately disappear.
Skubal has continued pitching like Skubal since arriving in Los Angeles. He went 5-2 with a 2.61 ERA in 10 starts for the Dodgers, striking out 70 batters over 62 innings. Los Angeles had plenty of accomplished options for Game 1, including Yoshinobu Yamamoto, but manager Dave Roberts will instead give the ball to its trade-deadline acquisition.
That decision illustrates exactly why Los Angeles gave Detroit a significant prospect package to acquire him.
The Tigers received outfielder Zyhir Hope and right-handers River Ryan and Brady Smith for Skubal. Hope has since become Detroit's top prospect, while Ryan and Smith give the organization two more intriguing pitching options for its next wave.
That is where the emotions become more complicated.
There will also be Tigers fans who have no interest in watching the Dodgers win another championship. Los Angeles has won the past two World Series and already possessed one of baseball's deepest rosters before adding Skubal.
Others may naturally view Skubal's postseason through the lens of the trade.
If he dominates throughout October, it will serve as another reminder of what Detroit surrendered. If Hope, Ryan and Smith eventually develop into important pieces for the Tigers, the organization will have its own answer several years from now.
Those two outcomes are not mutually exclusive.
Skubal can pitch like one of the best pitchers in baseball for Los Angeles while the Tigers can still ultimately benefit from moving a player who was approaching free agency. The trade does not have to produce an immediate winner and loser every time Skubal takes the mound.
That may be the strangest adjustment for Tigers fans.
For years, Skubal taking the ball meant wanting every slider to generate a swing and miss and every 98 mph fastball to beat a hitter. There was no conflict involved.
Saturday will be different. Some fans will see the same pitcher they watched develop at Comerica Park and hope he dominates Atlanta. Others will simply watch because they remain interested in Skubal without wanting Los Angeles to advance. There will probably be another group rooting directly against the Dodgers regardless of who is pitching.
And some Tigers fans might find themselves doing something even stranger: rooting for Skubal to throw seven scoreless innings and then hoping the Dodgers bullpen loses the game.Baseball fandom allows for that kind of contradiction.
Skubal already provided Detroit fans with plenty of memorable moments. His performance during the 2024 and 2025 postseason runs helped establish him as more than just an excellent regular-season pitcher. Across six postseason starts during those two years, he posted a 2.04 ERA with 56 strikeouts.
Now his October story continues somewhere else.
Saturday's start does not change whether trading Skubal was ultimately the correct decision for Detroit. That answer will depend much more on what Hope, Ryan and Smith become over the next several seasons.
But it will provide the first real postseason reminder that one of Detroit's defining players from the past few years now belongs to another contender.
Tigers fans just have to decide what they want to happen once he throws the first pitch.
