Tarik Skubal has been one of the best starting pitchers in all of baseball over the last few years, winning two consecutive Cy Young Awards as a member of the Detroit Tigers. But the Tigers have been having a rough season, and the team dealt Skubal to the Dodgers at the trade deadline this past weekend. Now, MLB The Show 26 is celebrating Skubal’s move to Los Angeles with a special Diamond Dynasty card, so everyone can play as the biggest villain in baseball.
Coming later today around noon PT / 3 PM ET, the New Threads Trade Deadline program contains a 99-rated Tarik Skubal. The other players and their ratings are as follows:
- Jo Adell (99)
- Taylor Ward (98)
- Arjun Nimmala (98)
- Ryan Zeferjahn (97)
- Luke Weaver (97)
- Luis Castillo (97)
- Liam Hicks (97)
- Daulton Varsho (97)
- AJ Minter (97)
Skubal is one of two 99-rated cards in the bunch (though the extra booster packs contain a few more), and his real-life counterpart joins a team that already had the absolute best starting rotation in all of baseball. It makes the Dodgers even more of a ridiculously stacked team, and Skubal said he has no sympathy for people who blame the Dodgers for buying the best team every year. That being said, the Dodgers have been on a very rough stretch since the trade, so perhaps some form of karma is rebalancing the scales.
Skubal better enjoy the next few months of playing in his Dodgers uniform, because there’s a pretty good chance he’s not going to get to do it again until 2028. The CBA between the players and the league is set to expire, and a proposed salary cap is the biggest sticking point.