The best pitcher on Earth needs surgery.
Tarik Skubal, the Detroit Tigers’ back-to-back AL Cy Young award winner, is headed to the injured list with loose bodies in his left elbow. The team announced the news Monday afternoon mere hours before the 29-year-old hurler was slated to start against the visiting Boston Red Sox.
Both Skubal and Tigers manager A.J. Hinch spoke to reporters about the injury. Because Skubal has yet to go under the knife, it remains undetermined how long he’ll be sidelined. The typical recovery time for injuries of this sort can vary anywhere from two to five months.
“He needs to get it taken care of,” Hinch said. “Surgery is going to happen. Soon. He’s going through all the details of what that’s going to mean: Who, what, where, when.”
Late in Skubal’s most recent outing — April 29 against the Atlanta Braves — the lefty experienced some discomfort in his elbow. After blowing a 2-1 sinker by slugger Matt Olson in the seventh inning, Skubal immediately shook out his left arm and then waved catcher Dillon Dingler out toward the mound to buy some time. Skubal then removed his glove from his right hand and began massaging the outside of his left elbow. That brought Hinch and assistant athletic trainer Kelly Rhoades out of the dugout.
As the group conferred with one another atop the mound, Skubal continued rubbing out the top of his forearm. He shook it out a few more times before reassuring the concerned parties that he was capable of continuing. Hinch and Rhoades returned to the dugout. Skubal threw the next pitch, a 97 mph fastball, past Olson for a strikeout. He punched out the next two batters, finishing the frame and his evening.
Both Hinch and Skubal downplayed the incident postgame.
“I don’t really know how to explain it, I just needed a little bit of time,” Skubal told reporters, including MLB.com’s Perla Paredes, following the start. “And then the symptoms that I experienced on the one throw went away, and obviously it felt pretty good after that.”
“He had a funny feeling on the outside of his arm,” Hinch said that evening. “Then he wanted to throw a pitch, and then he punched out the side. So we felt good about the way he ended but certainly not fun walking out to the mound.”
Well, Hinch is having even less fun now.
It seems that Skubal’s symptoms reappeared over the intervening days, most recently Sunday. That prompted Hinch, Skubal and Co. to have the ace take some scans. Imaging revealed the loose bodies, ultimately pushing Skubal onto the IL.
“Obviously, if you go watch my outings, there’s been some abnormal kind of arm shake stuff,” Skubal said during Monday’s news conference, referring to the issues during his most recent start. “I thought it was progressing and getting better. Yesterday I had something that kind of was different than what I’d been dealing with. Which led to kind of having some conversations with the training staff and A.J. and wasn’t very comfortable pitching today.”
The Tigers will have a better understanding of the timeline once Skubal’s surgery occurs, likely later this week.
Yale Medicine defines loose bodies in the elbow as “small fragments of bone or cartilage that have become detached and are floating within the elbow joint.” Those particles can, but do not always, cause discomfort and lead to issues with range of motion. Pitchers are often throwing through various levels of pain, but not treating the root cause of any symptoms can lead to more significant injuries down the road.
Multiple big-name MLB arms are currently on the injured list with similar diagnoses.
Reds ace Hunter Greene underwent a procedure during spring training to remove bone spurs in his elbow. He is progressing and is expected back in July, which would put his total recovery time around 15 weeks. Other notable names include star Dodgers closer Edwin Díaz (April 22 surgery, late-season return), young Braves righty Spencer Schwellenbach (Feb. 18 surgery, second-half return) and Yankees southpaw Carlos Rodón (Oct. 16 surgery, currently on minor league rehab assignment).
Those particular timetables do not bode well for Skubal or the Tigers, currently 18-17 despite having the second-best run differential (+18) in the American League heading into play Monday. The swiftest return from this type of procedure in recent memory came in 2019 when Blake Snell took just 54 days after surgery to return to a big league mound. Considering everything at stake for Skubal and the Tigers, it’s likely he’ll move slower than that.
Skubal, in his final year of team control, is set to hit the open market for the first time this winter. The industry consensus is that the two-time Cy Young will break the record for the biggest contract ever handed to a pitcher: Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s 12-year, $325 million deal. This news, obviously, complicates things. When exactly Skubal returns and how he looks upon doing so could be the difference between $250 million and $400 million dollars.
Things are similarly serious for the Tigers, who entered 2026 hoping to contend in what may well be their last season with Skubal. With an extension unlikely, Detroit spent big on lefty starter Framber Valdez to slot in behind the big guy. That addition has proved crucial in the early going as the Tigers currently have six starting pitchers on the injured list: Skubal, Casey Mize, Troy Melton, Jackson Jobe, Reese Olson and Justin Verlander.
Detroit has a very impressive track record of using their bullpen depth to weather starting pitching injuries. Nonetheless, the task ahead of them is daunting: A world without Skubal is a dark world indeed.