Donovan Mitchell could not believe what he was reading Saturday night. The Cavaliers star and lifelong Mets fan reacted with disbelief after the Los Angeles Dodgers acquired two-time Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal from the Detroit Tigers in one of the biggest blockbusters of this year’s trade deadline.
“Hold on the Dodgers did what??????” Mitchell wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
The reaction fits Mitchell’s long-running habit of weighing in on baseball, particularly anything involving his beloved Mets or the sport’s biggest stars. He had actually flagged Skubal-to-a-bigger-market speculation months earlier, posting about a reported rift between the ace and the Tigers as far back as October.
The trade itself lived up to the shock value. Los Angeles sent outfielder Zyhir Hope and right-handers River Ryan and Brady Smith to Detroit in exchange for Skubal, who won back-to-back AL Cy Young Awards in 2024 and 2025. The move gives the back-to-back defending World Series champions a rotation that now includes Skubal, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Shohei Ohtani, Blake Snell, and Tyler Glasnow, assuming full health, widely regarded around the league as one of the most dominant starting staffs ever assembled.
Skubal did not hide his excitement after learning the news.
“I’m excited to be a Dodger,” Skubal said. “I’m excited to get down there and meet all those guys, and chase three championships in a row.”
For Detroit, the return brought back a pair of Dodgers’ Top 100 prospects, though neither figures to help the Tigers’ big-league roster immediately. Skubal made 156 career starts for the organization since his 2020 debut, becoming one of the faces of the franchise before circumstances pushed him elsewhere ahead of an expected free agency this winter.
As for Mitchell, his reaction captured what much of the baseball world felt watching the Dodgers add yet another superstar to an already loaded roster, disbelief that the sport’s reigning champions somehow found a way to get even better.