With the MLB trade deadline two days out, the market on Tarik Skubal's next uniform has sharpened dramatically since Monday, with Kalshi traders now pricing the Los Angeles Dodgers as a clear favorite and the Baltimore Orioles almost entirely out of the running.
The Kalshi market for Skubal's next team now shows the Dodgers at 46%, the Milwaukee Brewers at 22%, and Detroit holding him at 19%, with Tampa Bay and Atlanta as the only other outcomes above the noise. Baltimore, sitting at 16% four days ago, has collapsed to 1%.
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The Dodgers pull away
Los Angeles has held the top of the market since Monday, ticking up four percentage points, and reporting from the last 48 hours lines up with the price. Robert Murray of FanSided surveyed rival officials and reported that most now expect Skubal to end up in Los Angeles.
Not every scenario has the deal getting done cleanly. Reporting from Heavy.com outlined a Plan B for the Dodgers involving Mets right-hander Clay Holmes if Detroit's asking price becomes prohibitive.
The Brewers surge into second
Milwaukee has climbed steadily since Monday, jumping from 12% to 22% and settling in as the clear second-place market. Front-office urgency has been visible on other fronts too: the Brewers acquired catcher Bo Naylor from Cleveland on Friday, per Yahoo Sports, in a clear signal they intend to be aggressive.
Traders have also clearly cooled on the field behind Milwaukee. Atlanta, which Yahoo's earlier coverage described as having "surged overnight" from 6% to 17%, has since fallen back to 5%. Tampa Bay and the Chicago Cubs, both in the low-to-mid single digits, round out the second tier.
The Tigers dig in
The market's most striking secondary move is the "stays in Detroit" outcome, which has more than tripled from 4% to 17% in four days. That tracks with reporting that talks have moved slower than expected. Mike Chiari of Bleacher Report noted that "the Detroit Tigers had yet to seriously engage clubs" on a Skubal deal as of Friday afternoon.
Traders aren't reading that as a hard hold signal, but it's enough uncertainty to price a real chance the Tigers walk out of Monday still owning their two-time Cy Young winner.
The bigger picture: does he move at all?
The separate Kalshi market on whether Skubal gets dealt before Aug. 5 tells its own story. Traders priced a trade as high as 92% earlier this month. That number now sits at 81%, a meaningful slide as the deadline nears rather than the tightening most had expected.
Heavy.com's Caleb Kerney captured the current read from Detroit's side, writing that the Tigers "have all but publicly confirmed they will trade" Skubal and Casey Mize. Still, "all but confirmed" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, and the roughly 11-point drop from the peak trade-probability price suggests traders are pricing in the possibility Detroit blinks.
The takeaway:
Kalshi markets now predict:
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