Why Dodgers Tarik Skubal trade package was modest best-case scenario

What had felt inevitable has now become reality.Tarik Skubal is the Dodgers’ latest superstar acquisition.As the dust settles, Los Angeles celebrates and the rest of the baseball world processes the club’s latest blockbuster move, here are five initial takeaways on the transaction — which only further bolster the Dodgers’ World Series three-peat pursuit.While specific opinions vary, sources inside the Dodgers’ organization and around the rest of the industry shared a similar sentiment Saturday night.For a reigning two-time Cy Young Award winner, the Dodgers didn’t have to give up all that much in their package: parting with one consensus top-100 prospect in outfielder Zyhir Hope, a highly talented but also injury-prone Triple-A pitcher in River Ryan and a promising-but-very-much-raw Single-A pitcher in Brady Smith.It’s not that those three aren’t intriguing, several evaluators noted.

One rival scout even predicted all three to have big-league futures, noting that while “there is a question to how much impact [they’ll have], there is some ceiling to each.”The surprise, however, was that the Tigers got no one at the very top of the Dodgers’ system (such as outfielders Josue De Paula, Mike Sirota and Eduardo Quintero; all of whom are top-20 talents in the entire sport), nor from their current MLB-leading big-league roster (such as experienced big-league starters Justin Wrobleski or Emmet Sheehan).As one executive noted, president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman “worked his magic again” to pull it off.There will be many superlatives and historical factoids used to describe the sheer talent in the Dodgers’ current rotation.A few of the early examples:–– The Dodgers become just the 12th team to have a pair of previous multi-time Cy Young winners on the same team, with Skubal joining fellow two-time recipient Blake Snell (per Sarah Langs of MLB).–– For the first time in history, one team will have both a reigning two-time Cy Y...