Dave Roberts has heard the complaints about the Los Angeles Dodgers’ latest blockbuster move, and he has little sympathy for the teams that failed to stop it.
Los Angeles acquired back-to-back American League Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal from the Detroit Tigers on Saturday in exchange for prospects Zyhir Hope, River Ryan and Brady Smith. The deal immediately sparked another round of criticism over the Dodgers’ spending power and perceived competitive advantage.
Roberts pushed back on that narrative on Sunday, arguing that the Dodgers simply used the resources they had built.
“It just seems like there’s always blowback with us,” Roberts said, via ESPN. “There’s nothing that we did that no one else couldn’t have done.”
The Dodgers manager credited the organization’s scouting and player-development departments for maintaining one of baseball’s strongest farm systems despite consecutive World Series championships.
“We have to have the players to go pull something like this off, and we’ve still got, you know, arguably the top one or two or three farm systems in baseball,” Roberts said. “So it’s a credit to a lot of people in this organization.”
Other teams had the prospect capital to compete for Skubal but declined to match or exceed Los Angeles’ offer. Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said the front office entered the deadline prepared to be aggressive for one particular player.
Roberts summarized the team’s approach more bluntly: “It was Skubal or nothing.”
Skubal joins a pitching staff that could eventually include Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Shohei Ohtani, Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow. With everyone but Yamamoto currently dealing with an injury, Skubal’s arrival provides the Dodgers with a proven ace as the rest of the rotation works its way back to full strength.
The Dodgers fell to 69-43 following Sunday’s loss to the Boston Red Sox, but remained comfortably ahead in the NL West. Skubal is scheduled to make his Los Angeles debut Tuesday against the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field.
With the Dodgers pursuing baseball’s first three-peat since the 1998-2000 Yankees, Roberts and Friedman are making no apologies for going all-in.
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