00:00Bad news. Sad news, bad news on Tarek Skubal as it relates to the Tigers ace and the back-to
00:06-back Cy Young Award winner in the American League.
00:08Evan Petztold initially reported that Tarek Skubal is undergoing surgery and arthroscopic surgery for loose bodies in his left elbow.
00:15So there's no UCL tear. There's no UCL damage. It is the sake of safety.
00:21And this is a three to three and a half month process.
00:24Typically, it's very similar to what Edwin Diaz underwent, what, about two weeks ago for the L.A. Dodgers.
00:30But Tarek Skubal, this, I guess, reigns on the parade of not only his quest for three straight Cy Young
00:37Awards in the American League, which is unheard of.
00:40It also reigns on his possible payday.
00:43And I'm curious, like, where you initially went when you saw this Skubal loose body surgery.
00:51I guess just, like, another guy? Like, it's interesting.
00:56I feel like we've had a disproportionate amount of loose body-specific, like, injuries this year, at least on notable
01:04arms than we've had in recent years.
01:07And, I mean, I know we're always going to have the Tommy John situation, but I just think it's interesting.
01:11And this is obviously way better in the grand scheme.
01:14This is somewhat of an inevitability.
01:16You throw enough times, little fragments are going to chip off.
01:18I think the biggest part is catching that early so that those fragments don't then impede, you know, ligaments or
01:24create other issues, like, as well.
01:26And I think pitchers are just so in tune with their arms at this point.
01:29And teams are so cautious from, you know, just mitigating injury that if something feels a little bit off, they're
01:37checking it out.
01:37So maybe these, you know, bone fragments, bone chips are being picked up sooner, you know, than we have seen
01:42in the past.
01:43But the first thing I went to was the free agency side of things.
01:47And maybe it says a lot about us.
01:48We're just thinking about money, right, and even other people's money.
01:50But I just think after the whole arbitration side of things and the potential that Tarek Skubel could be the
01:57highest paid pitcher in Major League Baseball history here.
02:00That was just the first thing that I went to mentally, but more so in the respect that, like, if
02:04I were a team and I had the money, would it change anything for me?
02:07And the answer is pretty much no.
02:09I'd try to leverage it, you know, to maybe save a few bucks.
02:12But does loose bodies change much for you with Tarek Skubel, given, you know, what he's shown us?
02:18If he comes out the other side and continues to throw the way that, you know, we assume he will.
02:22I guess it would need to be performance dependent, to your point.
02:27Like, if he comes out the other side and looks like Tarek Skubel and he's running it up to 100
02:31miles an hour in big moments, which he does constantly.
02:34I think I have no problem still paying him.
02:37The question is, like, does this concern and injury and elbow issue and surgery in a walk year impact the
02:46450 that he was getting?
02:48He's still going to be the highest paid pitcher of all time, I think.
02:51Like, he's going to clear $350 million.
02:53But did this cost him $100 million?
02:56Did it get him from 450 to 350?
02:58350 is still a ton of money, folks.
03:02And it's still more than Yamamoto got over 13 years or 12 years for Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
03:07But it's not 450.
03:09We're talking about leaving $100 million on the table.
03:12And we talk about swings like that all the time.
03:15Chris Bryan had a resurgent year in a walk year, and he probably net himself $100 million in free agency.
03:23Frambois Valdez, with that Cesar Salazar cross-up, probably cost himself two years on a contract and probably north of
03:30$50 million.
03:32With this, I understand that it is a minor procedure relative to other elbow procedures.
03:37But at the end of the day, I just wonder if it costs him $100 million based on the ludicrous
03:42numbers that we were talking about.
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