A humbling trade for Phillies as Dodgers leverage farm brilliance to add Tarik Skubal
By adding Skubal, the two-time defending AL Cy Young winner, the Dodgers have blunted the one competitive advantage the Phillies might have in a series.
Nobody wants to admit it, but the Dodgers deserve Tarik Skubal. They landed him the old fashioned way. They drafted, developed, traded, and signed their way to a circumstance where they could trade a highly-valued outfield prospect for three months of service that will only pad their odds of completing a three-peat that they were favored to accomplish anyway.
That’s what you should focus on. The dignity of the deal. Not the Dodgers’ myraid of other competitive advantages. The endless payroll. The creative accounting. The market size, location, and glitz. None of them matter as much as the fundamentals. The Dodgers are simply better at identifying and nurturing talent than any other organization. To focus on anything else is to give your own organization a pass.
The Dodgers traded for Skubal because they could.
They had four outfielders ranked among the 40 best prospects in the game, for crying out loud. Three of them were at Double-A already. Their big league outfield already includes young breakout star Andy Pages in center field and Kyle Tucker in right. Not only do they have high-end prospects that other teams want, they can afford to trade some of them. In fact, they almost have to trade some of them.
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From 2021 through 2026, the Dodgers had 22 different players appear on at least one of the major national Top 100 lists. The Phillies had eight during the same timespan. Only two teams in the majors had fewer than the Phillies. Only three teams in the majors had more than the Dodgers.
General managers and scouting directors tend to roll their eyes any time they end up on the wrong side of the Top 100 math. These lists don’t come close to providing an expert-level understanding of a team’s farm system. They are prone to politics and groupthink and statistics without context. All of which is true. But you can’t argue with the market.
The centerpiece of the Skubal trade is a good example of the Dodgers’ skill in this prospect thing. It’s also a good example of why it isn’t too early to expect more out of Dave Dombrowski’s farm system.
Let’s start at the beginning. . .
Feb. 2020 — Dodgers acquire Mookie Betts for two Top 50 prospects, neither of whom is Gavin Lux, who enters the season as a consensus Top 5 prospect.
Jan. 2022 — Dodgers sign Dominican outfielder Josue De Paula for $400,000 in international bonus money.
March 2022 — Dodgers enter season with six Top 100 prospects, including Michael Busch. Dodgers initially drafted Busch at No. 31 in 2019, four picks after the Cubs took college pitcher Ryan Jensen.
Jan. 2023 — Dodgers sign Venezuelan outfielder Eduardo Quintero for $297,500 in international bonus money.
Jan. 2024 — Dodgers trade Busch to Cubs for Zyhir Hope in what was basically a prospect-for-prospect deal.
Jan. 2025 — Dodgers trade Lux to Reds for outfielder Mike Sirota and a competitive balance pick, which they use on outfielder Charles Davalan.
Jan. 2026 — Hope, Sirota, Quintero and De Paula all enter season as Top 100 prospects. Davalan is ranked as the No. 7 prospect in the Dodgers org and a potential 2027 Top 100 prospect.
That’s a tidy snapshot of what makes the Dodgers the Dodgers. It isn’t just drafting and development. It’s knowing when to trade your own guys. It’s knowing who to trade for. It’s knowing how to spend international money. Look, a lot of those 22 Top 100 prospects have yet to turn into stars. Josiah Gray, Bobby Miller, Gavin Stone, and Keibert Ruiz are some of the names. But all it takes is one Pages or (potentially) Dalton Rushing to turn into a homegrown star.
With one day to go before the MLB trade deadline, Phillies fans again are looking to a highly variable and often prohibitively expensive market to remedy roster holes that will never truly be solved without an adequate farm system. Imagine plugging someone like Pages into the lineup. Imagine if Andrew Painter had Justin Wrobleski’s pitching line. More often than not, trade deadlines are won and lost long before they arrive. The losers are the desperate teams. The winners are the ones who can outbid anybody but do not need to unless a game-changing deal comes around.
The Dodgers just struck such a deal. In adding Skubal, the two-time defending AL Cy Young winner, they have blunted the one competitive advantage the Phillies might have in a series. Even if Shohei Ohtani is unable to return to the mound this season, L.A. will still be able to go toe-to-to in the first two games of a series.
David Murphy alerts
Skubal vs. Cristopher Sanchez in Game 1.
Yoshinobu Yammamoto vs. Zack Wheeler in Game 2.
Beyond that, the Dodgers could have some combination of Wrobleski, former AL Cy Young winner Blake Snell, and 2025 postseason standout Tyler Glasnow, the latter two of whom are expected to rejoin the rotation off the IL in the near future. Plus, whatever they can get out of Ohtani, another former Cy Young winner.
The Dodgers big league depth is overwhelming. Their payroll has a lot to do with that. But a big payroll is no match for elite-level decision-making. Right now, that’s the Dodgers’ greatest competitive advantage.
