I guess I get that Skubal isn't a household name and doesn't have any standout career stats, but he was also one of the most popular Cy Young candidates among pundits. Re: the conversation that was happening a little while ago in the thread, I would expect Detroit to make a big investment in him as a cornerstone to exit their long rebuild. There's some logic to trading him, but elite pitchers are the hardest position to fill and it's not like they are afraid to spend money. Their rebuild would be in such better shape if Torkelson had not regressed this year and they never gave all that money to Baez, but I digress.
I think we did get a bit of luck with the doubleheader and missing Flaherty. Gonzales and Perez got us some half decent starts through 6 weeks of the season, but man it would be nice to have just signed Flaherty to a deal instead. Then we'd really be cooking, but that's a topic for another day.
Skubal is going to be really difficult, and a rookie pitcher often has the advantage if he can settle into a groove early on. I don't have extremely high hopes, but I'm also at the point where I think it doesn't matter much. We're a team that is about .500 and demonstrating the capability to crater below that with the slides and missed opportunities. The NL is even more competitive than expected this year, which generally favors us, but to truly make a run at anything, it's going to take 10-12 games over .500 play for the rest of the season.
That's a long way off and so not worth worrying about too much, but I think what it boils down to is that games don't have a ton of urgency to them until we are able to rattle off a winning streak or a chunk of extremely good games, like 10-2 etc. Otherwise it's just fluttering around .500 or so with some ups and downs. We had the kind of cushion in hand after the hot start, but we've long since blown it.
