Ben Maller Show Best of the Week

The Detroit Tigers traded two-time Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal to the Los Angeles Dodgers for a package headlined by prospect Zaire Hope and minor leaguer River Ryan, and Ben Maller is not remotely surprised by the outrage. "You pearl clutching lunatics," he says. "How do you live your life?" The trade deadline deal set off a familiar cycle: fans of other teams declared baseball ruined, the Dodgers crowned champions in August, and Maller spent a segment of his Monday show explaining why both the outrage and the coronation are wrong.

The Tigers made a donation, not a trade

Maller grades the Tigers a D on his report card, calling the deal "a donation situation" rather than a trade. The Tigers were three games back of a wild card spot when they made the move—still technically in contention—but Maller dismisses that as "faux contender" territory because they were under .500. Detroit decided not to pay Skubal, who is a pending free agent, and the return reflects that. "Every prospect that I've heard about since I was a kid, every one of these prospects is treated like Bitcoin in 2017," Maller says. "All hype, no reality. A prospect is a suspect until proven otherwise."