Bryan Harsin is back in Idaho and ‘thriving’ in his post-Auburn life
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Chris Low, ESPN Senior Writer
IT’S BEEN NEARLY seven months since Bryan Harsin walked out of his football office at Auburn for the last time.
He did so with a $15.3 million parting gift — the kind of pricey buyout Auburn has become known for when it comes to fired football coaches — and a promise to himself and his family that his sights would remain straight ahead and not in the rearview mirror.
“I wasn’t going to let it eat at me, no matter how s—ty some of the things were that my family had to endure,” Harsin told ESPN recently in his first extended interview since being fired Oct. 31, 2022.
“There were things we didn’t like. There were things that were disappointing, on and off the field. There were things that I wish I would have done better, and there were things where we got a chance to see some of the worst in people.
“At the same time, here we are. We’re thriving.”
Harsin is back home in Boise, Idaho, with his family and a group of close friends, some of whom he went to college with at Boise State. He never sold his house when he made the move to Auburn on Dec. 22, 2020, and when he was fired 22 months later, it was an easy decision to head back. The return to Idaho has been therapeutic for Harsin and his family, really from the time he and wife Kes loaded their two dogs and embarked on the 33-hour cross-country drive back to Boise, where they first met as teenagers in junior high school.
“The person who bought our home in Auburn bought it as is, furniture and everything,” Harsin said. “We flew the kids back, and Kes and I jumped in the car. We drove through Mississippi and Louisiana, through rainstorms, through Colorado in the snow with a truck driver in front of us. We had a hell of a time.”
It was the start of Harsin seeing a life beyond coaching, which has made it easier to forget everything that went wrong at Auburn.
And a lot did go wrong.
THINGS started going wrong even before he had the Auburn job. His interview with the school, which was conducted over Zoom, had some glitches. “The screen went blank during the interview. I couldn’t see them, but they told me to keep on, so I kept rocking along,” Harsin said. “I walked out of my office, and my wife asked me how it went. I said, ‘I don’t know. The screen went blank, and I couldn’t even see them.'”
But that wasn’t the end of the technical difficulties. Harsin finished 9-12 in less than two seasons, losing 10 of his final 13 games, and never gained any real traction on the recruiting trail. He was viewed as an outsider by influential boosters from the time he stepped foot on campus and experienced a mass exodus of players and coaches following his first season.
Following the departures, a university-directed investigation into Harsin and his relationships with players and staff members left him in limbo for eight days. He was retained, but during that time, social media message boards were filled with ugly rumors about Harsin and his family and their personal lives. “Everything we were going through — these players, this program, the attacks on my character and my family — was bulls—,” Harsin told ESPN in the wake of the investigation.
Then, just before the start of Harsin’s second season in 2022, Allen Greene, the athletic director who hired him, stepped down as it was clear new university president Chris Roberts had no intention of renewing Greene’s contract.
Once again, Harsin was left in a difficult spot, or as one rival SEC coach told ESPN prior to last season, “cut off at the knees” in a league that chews up and spits out even the most established coaches. Harsin was fired after a home loss to Arkansas left Auburn with a 3-5 record. A statement from the school said Roberts “made the decision after a thorough review and evaluation of all aspects of the football program.”
“We dealt with it as a family, and it made us even closer, because that was the first real failure in a lot of ways because we were winning and had a lot of success everywhere else we’d been,” said Harsin, who won 10 or more games in five of his six full seasons as head coach at Boise State. He also was part of two undefeated seasons as the Broncos’ offensive coordinator under Chris Petersen.
Successful coaches don’t typically forget how to coach overnight. But for myriad reasons, the Harsin/Auburn marriage just never was a fit.
“You learn in every situation, the good and the bad,” Harsin said. “But when you really get tested as we were at Auburn, and it’s the same challenge for your players, your true colors are going to show in how you handle it. Certainly, there are things we could have done better and things we would have done differently if you could go back.
“But as a family, we stood on the things we believed in and held firm on those things. That was our foundation, and that’s the way we’re moving forward.”
HARSIN CAN’T SAY whether he will be ready to be back on the sideline for the 2024 season. The 46-year-old said he received some interest from schools after being fired, but nothing he felt was right.
Plus, he’s getting to do things that would have never been possible in the past. He’s enjoyed three-hour lunches with former teammates and old friends and spends mornings with his wife drinking coffee, working out and helping clean the house.
“Kes is probably enjoying it as much as I am, watching me go through all the things she has all these years,” Harsin said with a laugh. “The most important thing, though, is that we’re doing things. We’re not sitting around and moping and watching Netflix. We are active and out, and we are trying to better ourselves and take advantage of the time we have together.”
They went to see a Kane Brown concert, and Harsin is building a 1969 Mustang Mach 1, “a bad machine,” as he calls it. It takes him back to his days of racing drag cars at speeds of 200 mph when he finished high school. His father, Dale Harsin, was one of the pioneers of Funny Car racing in the early 1970s, and at one point, Harsin thought his future would be in racing cars and not coaching football.
Harsin’s father was a huge part of his childhood, and he’s used the past few months to strengthen the connection with his son. He recently went on a whirlwind football tour to several colleges with his son, Davis, a rising senior at Eagle High in the Boise suburbs and quarterback prospect at the college level.
Some of Davis’ teammates and their fathers were also part of the tour, and as much as anything, Harsin soaked up the chance to be a dad, listen to his son ask questions to coaches and see the recruiting process from a whole different perspective.
They visited Pac-12 schools and smaller schools, too, from Oregon and Cal to UC Davis and Idaho State. Idaho State coach Cody Hawkins is the son of Dan Hawkins, who hired Harsin at Boise State in 2001 as a graduate assistant.
“It was really cool hearing Davis’ thoughts and what he got out of sitting in some of the meetings and watching the practices,” Harsin said. “It’s an experience I’ll always remember, being able to go to all these places with my son, tap into some of our connections with past coaching colleagues … and do it as a dad and not so much as a coach.”
During their travels, Harsin couldn’t help but think back to a conversation he used to have with Petersen at Boise State.
“I used to tell Pete, ‘Wouldn’t it be awesome if coaches could take a year, like a sabbatical, and go out there and see other things and get a different perspective on stuff?'” Harsin recalled.
Petersen’s response was always the same: “Yeah, that’s called getting fired.”
Harsin has heard from numerous coaches since his firing, including Mack Brown, for whom he was offensive coordinator at Texas. Harsin said former Duke and Ole Miss coach David Cutcliffe, now working for the SEC, gave him some of the best advice.
“He said that when he got fired [at Ole Miss] that he jumped right back in and it wasn’t the right thing to do,” Harsin said. “I have tremendous respect for David Cutcliffe and just his wisdom on things. He told me to take some time, and I had that in my mind already, and that conversation with him only helped.”
Former Washington coach Jimmy Lake sent Harsin a so-called game plan for how to cope with losing a job. There were about 15 things on the list. Among them: Don’t panic. Be yourself. Have no regrets. Get out of the house.
Another one was to do something you’ve always wanted to do.
For Harsin, that was spending more quality time with his entire family. Both of his daughters, Devyn and Dayn, are also in the Boise area. Devyn is an esthetician, and Dayn (named after former Wisconsin Heisman Trophy winner Ron Dayne) is a junior at Boise State.
“I feel as good as I’ve ever felt, refreshed,” Harsin said. “My body feels good. My mind feels good. I feel younger and have a lot in my tank to go do whatever I choose to do.
“Right now, that’s enjoying my family.”
HARSIN IS NOT interested in looking back, even though he says his short time at Auburn would help him be more discerning, more selective and more inquisitive when and if he decides to go back down the coaching road.
“The first thing I would say is that I would ask different questions,” Harsin said. “The football piece is just one piece. It’s everything else around the program that really matters. You can solve a lot of problems by asking the right questions, not the football part so much, but everything else.”
One of the most challenging things for Harsin when he took the job was that he arrived with COVID-19 restrictions still in place. A frequent criticism of Harsin was that he didn’t make enough of an effort to get to know key power brokers and establish himself in the Auburn community, an approach his critics say also spilled over into recruiting.
“It was difficult to get out and see anybody, to meet people,” he said. “And from that point, in some ways, it felt like you were playing from behind.”
New Auburn coach Hugh Freeze is the school’s third head coach in four seasons. Auburn has fired its past five coaches and paid a total of $44.2 million in buyout money to the past three.
Harsin isn’t in the business of giving advice, but he’s more convinced than ever that complete alignment from the president to the board of trustees to the athletic director is critical to win consistently in the SEC, especially when you’re playing Alabama and Georgia every year.
“But we don’t want to make that our problem any longer,” Harsin said. “That’s Auburn’s problem. We’ve moved on and being home has never felt better.”
Sports
‘You don’t want to have the same drip’: How a Houston Christian receiver became a shoe artist to the stars
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Max Olson
After Texas A&M‘s season-opening win over UTSA in August, Deacon Stanfield made his way down to a tunnel at Kyle Field. KC Concepcion met him there.
The Aggies’ new star receiver was looking to do a handoff. He passed two pairs of his team-issued Adidas cleats to Stanfield. In exchange, the artist promised he would hook him up with more of his finest work.
Custom cleats are a burgeoning business in the era of name, image and likeness, as college football players invest their own money into upgrading their in-game attire. When Concepcion and his Aggie teammates Rueben Owens II, Terry Bussey and Will Lee III are looking for something unique during their 10-0 start, they hit up their shoe guy in Houston.
“That’s the whole thing: You don’t want to look like everyone else, right?” Stanfield said. “You don’t want to have the same drip as the guy next to you.”
Stanfield has worked with Travis Hunter, Ryan Williams and Jeremiah Smith. He’s painted cleats worn by pros such as Travis Etienne Jr., Emeka Egbuka and Carlos Correa. He’s even painted custom Nikes for Caitlin Clark. He’s been customizing shoes for six years — and he just turned 20. What started as a high school hobby has evolved into a successful side hustle. When he’s not spray-painting kicks, he’s playing wide receiver and taking classes at Houston Christian. His teammates at HCU call him “The Cobbler.” Stanfield tries to slow down orders in the fall to focus on being an FCS student-athlete, but he’ll make exceptions when high-profile athletes pop up in his Instagram DMs.
He started this passion in 2019. His art teacher in junior high assigned the class to paint something on an unconventional canvas, so Stanfield tried a pair of shoes. As he watched more tutorial videos on YouTube about the customizing process, he wanted to keep learning and saved up to buy an airbrush and compressor.
“A lot of it was self-taught,” Stanfield said. “I just started, and I ruined so many shoes in the process, just messing with my own shoes.”
His father, Dusty, works in athlete marketing and helped get this hobby kick started with his connections. Deacon painted custom creations for NFL players Trayveon Williams and Case Keenum in 2020, but his first pair that garnered attention were “Duck Hunt”-themed Nike cleats for Hunter Renfrow, a pixelated tribute to the classic NES video game.
“I think with phones and devices taking up so much of their free time, it seems like kids these days are kind of delayed in finding their passion and finding what they really want to do,” Dusty Stanfield said. “So for him to figure that out, it’s something as a parent that’s very fulfilling to see.”
Deacon got opportunities to customize cleats for Etienne and several NFL players as part of the league’s “My Cause My Cleats” campaign. He has also partnered with Panini, which has flown him in for Super Bowl week each of the past three years to create custom cleats for pro athletes at their hospitality suite. Every shoe helps as Stanfield tries to grow his brand and business.
He put on a brave face in a surreal setting for a teen, joking that his “whole body was shaking” as he handed custom Nike sneakers to Eli Manning before this year’s Super Bowl in New Orleans. But nothing compared to the nerves of prepping a pair of Nike Blazer Mid ’77 for Clark to commemorate her Rookie of the Year season with the Indiana Fever.
“She is literally the definition of aura,” Stanfield said. “When she walked in, it felt like the entire room stopped talking and looked at her. When she opened them, she looked over at me and was like, ‘These are so cool. Did you make these?’ It was definitely one of the coolest experiences of my life.”
This is an enterprise that wouldn’t have been possible before the NIL era arrived and modernized college athletics in 2021. It’s run by an active college athlete and supported by athletes who finally have disposable income to spend. Stanfield’s timing couldn’t have been better. And this fall, the Aggies are keeping him busy.
Stanfield did custom sets of maroon, black and white cleats for Bussey and former A&M quarterback Conner Weigman last year and was quickly deluged with more orders. He came up with black Louis Vuitton-themed cleats for linebacker Taurean York and green camouflage cleats for Weigman.
Now he’s producing new shoes for Concepcion, the SEC’s third-leading receiver, every game this season. First it was black cleats with Chrome Hearts brand crosses and then gray Louis Vuitton cleats for the road win at Notre Dame. Stanfield got especially creative for the Aggies’ throwback uniform against Florida, painting an A-10 ‘Warthog’ shark mouth on gold cleats for Concepcion.
It’s not easy to run an airbrush-heavy business out of his Houston Christian dorm room, so Stanfield makes the 30-minute drive home to Fulshear, Texas, on Thursdays, his day off from football, to get his custom orders done out of his garage workspace.
Last Thursday, he put in another marathon session in his workshop customizing four pairs of cleats over 11 hours. Concepcion, Owens, Bussey and Lee got them back just in time to wear them for the No. 3 Aggies’ comeback win over South Carolina.
“I think it’s super cool that Coach [Mike] Elko is relaxed about that,” Stanfield said. “Some coaches won’t let their players wear anything other than black or white.”
HCU coaches have been no less supportive of Stanfield’s entrepreneurship ever since he joined the program last year. The 6-foot, 160-pound scholarship receiver is on the Huskies’ two-deep and travel squad this season and has played six games as a redshirt freshman.
He’s learned how to design mock-ups on his tablet or phone because the prep phase for customizing a shoe can be lengthy.
Stanfield starts by sanding down the shoe’s exterior and wiping it with acetone to strip the original factory finish, taping the soles and areas he won’t paint. Typically, he says, this can take up to two hours — if you’re doing it right.
Once he’s working with a clean canvas, it’s time to airbrush several layers of acrylic leather paint while often incorporating stencils. Stanfield has been doing this long enough that he can mix paint and make Aggie maroon by eyeballing it. After he’s done hand-painting and carefully detailing, the shoes get sprayed with a protective matte finish.
Stanfield can scroll through his camera roll and point to hundreds of cleats and shoes he’s customized, but nothing has gone viral such as the pair he customized for Alabama‘s Ryan Williams last season. Williams ordered a custom pair from him during his senior year of high school and asked for another with his “Hollywood” nickname painted across Nikes last season. After Williams’ breakout performance to beat Georgia, Stanfield did one more for him. Williams gave him creative license to paint whatever he liked.
Stanfield hand-painted a portrait of Williams with red braids over black Nikes. He even recreated the “SC Top 10” chain with gold and silver rhinestones. The pair took him at least 10 hours over several days to produce as he carefully painted the portrait, placed the stones and perfected the details.
Stanfield shared the shoes on his Instagram account, and Williams reposted them after Stanfield had gone to bed. Stanfield’s jaw dropped the next day when SportsCenter’s Instagram account shared his work with the world, in a post that got more than 113,000 likes.
Stanfield typically charges between $100 and $350 for these custom jobs depending on the difficulty.
Some players ship him their team-issued shoes. Others ask him to find a particular pair and add it to the bill. He’s not charging as much as many of the more established creators in this niche industry, mostly because he wants to stay affordable for high school and college athletes.
Keisean Henderson, ESPN’s No. 1 ranked quarterback recruit in the 2026 class, has ordered plenty from Stanfield, including a pair this offseason with his favorite Davy Crockett racoon-skin cap painted on the sides. The Houston commit collaborated with him again this summer on a black Louis Vuitton-style pair covered in UH emojis.
“He is one of one,” Henderson told ESPN. “He can take a thought from your mind and make it reality.”
This is how Stanfield is trying to get his foot in the door in a competitive business by connecting with the next big stars before they blow up. Stanfield did three pairs of custom cleats for Ohio State superstar Jeremiah Smith during his 7-on-7 days with South Florida Express. He would love to work with Smith again, but the Buckeyes don’t wear custom cleats during games.
Some connections endure for years and some pop up in an instant with an unexpected DM. Last summer, he was scrolling through his message requests on Instagram and spotted one from Leanna De La Fuente. She was inquiring about pricing and was looking to surprise her fiancé. When he clicked on her profile and realized she was referring to Hunter, he was astonished and immediately replied.
Stanfield shipped custom black cleats that featured Hunter’s Instagram handle. De La Fuente sent him a thank you video from the two-way star, who promised he would wear them for a game. The artist waited all season, wondering when Colorado‘s Heisman Trophy winner might break them out. Hunter saved the pair for his finale with the Buffaloes in the Alamo Bowl against BYU.
College players who can afford customs are typically wearing them for only one game to complement a specific uniform combination, while high schoolers tend to wear them all season. Henderson, the No. 4 recruit in this year’s SC Next 300, said he currently has four pairs of customs from Stanfield with more to come.
“You can stand out and express yourself without saying words,” Henderson said. “The game of football is made for you to stay in uniform. When I see the opportunity to make it my own, I try my best to showcase how I feel from my cleats.”
Back at Houston Christian, Stanfield tries his best to juggle all his responsibilities. He wore his own work, a pair of orange Louis Vuitton cleats, throughout spring and fall practice with the Huskies. Bachtel credits offensive coordinator Mike Besbitt for starting “The Cobbler” nickname in the spring, and it stuck with teammates. He’s done color swap customs for a few of them, but they know he’s already plenty busy at this time of year. The head coach would like a pair someday, too.
“I told him, ‘Look, I’m not as flashy as you. I don’t need all the Louis Vuitton and all that,'” Bachtel joked. “Just give me something we can wear in recruiting and maybe on the sidelines.”
As much as he would like to someday go full time in shoe customizing, Stanfield says he’s loving his experience in college football and not looking to fast-forward past it. Everybody tells him he’ll miss it when it’s over, so he’s trying to enjoy it. He’ll be back open for business in the offseason and eager to see what creative requests come next.
“I’ve never really thought of it as time-consuming,” Stanfield said, “because it’s a job that doesn’t feel like a job.”
The 2025-26 MLB hot stove has been lit just days after the Los Angeles Dodgers hoisted their second consecutive World Series championship trophy.
All eyes this winter are on a free agent hitting class featuring Kyle Tucker, Kyle Schwarber, Cody Bellinger, Alex Bregman and Pete Alonso. But they’re not the only ones who will make a splash in the market.
Which teams will go big to contend for the 2026 World Series title? And who will make the trades and deals that have everyone buzzing?
Below is a running list of notable transactions and updates from throughout the MLB offseason.
Key links: Offseason grades | Top 50 free agents | Fantasy spin | Best fits
Notable MLB offseason transactions
Nov. 19
The Braves re-signed closer Raisel Iglesias to a one-year, $16 million contract.
The Atlanta Braves acquired Mauricio Dubon from the Houston Astros for Nick Allen in an exchange of infielders.
Nov. 18
The Baltimore Orioles acquired outfielder Taylor Ward from the Los Angeles Angels in exchange for right-hander Grayson Rodriguez.
New York Yankees outfielder Trent Grisham, Detroit Tigers infielder Gleyber Torres, Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Brandon Woodruff and Chicago Cubs pitcher Shota Imanaga accepted their qualifying offers, meaning they’ll return to their respective teams in 2026 at salaries of $22.025 million.
Nov. 17
Reliever Ryan Yarbrough will be back in the Bronx after agreeing to a one-year deal with the New York Yankees.
Nov. 16
First baseman Josh Naylor and the Seattle Mariners have finalized a five-year, $92.5 million contract that has a full no-trade clause and no deferrals, sources tell ESPN.
Nov. 4
Chicago Cubs SP Shota Imanaga becomes free agent after team, player reject options for 2026
Nov. 3
Milwaukee Brewers exercise option on SP Freddy Peralta; SP Brandon Woodruff declines option
Boston Red Sox 3B Alex Bregman opts out of contract; SP Lucas Giolito declines option
New York Yankees OF Cody Bellinger declines option
New York Mets 1B Pete Alonso, RP Edwin Díaz opt out of contracts
Key offseason dates
Nov. 6: Free agency begins at 5 p.m. ET
Nov. 10-13: GM meetings in Las Vegas
Nov. 18-20: Owners meetings in New York
Nov. 18: Deadline to accept or reject qualifying offer
Nov. 21: Non-tender deadline
Dec. 8-10: Winter meetings in Orlando
Dec. 9: MLB draft lottery
Dec. 10: Rule 5 draft
Sports
$400 million extension, blockbuster trade or let it ride? MLB insiders break down Tigers’ Tarik Skubal options
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Kiley McDaniel
After three seasons with a face-of-the-franchise-type superstar to headline the winter, there is no Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani or Juan Soto in the 2025-26 free agent class. But there is still one player whose potential availability could rock the offseason ahead: Tarik Skubal.
Why would the Detroit Tigers possibly move their ace on the heels of his second straight American League Cy Young Award and the team’s second consecutive postseason appearance?
Quite simply, because keeping Skubal in Detroit is going to become very expensive, very soon. The 28-year-old left-hander will enter the final year of his contract in 2026 before he is scheduled to reach free agency after the season. If he does hit the market next winter, Skubal has a chance of surpassing Los Angeles Dodgers ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s record $325 million contract, and he could even become baseball’s first $400 million pitcher.
With Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris facing a decision that will shape the future of the franchise — and impact all of MLB — we talked with 11 industry insiders about what Detroit should do this offseason, broken into three main options.
1. Trade Skubal this winter
This was the least-popular option among our panel and one rival executive explained why.
“The whole reason you do all this is to start a season with a potential contender that has an ace. You can’t throw that away before the season starts. How long will it take to get here again?”
Some panelists hemmed and hawed about how much a team would have to overpay to get Detroit to consider a trade, believing an offer that included a young starting pitcher with front-line potential would be enough to start internal conversations — but nobody could get themselves logically to advocate for a deal unless something completely illogical was offered. And that type of deal increasingly doesn’t happen in modern baseball.
If the Tigers were to trade Skubal for anything less than a gobsmacking return, it would likely mean their competitive window would be tighter — and it would be hard to call Detroit a contender without Skubal next season. Dealing away a player of his caliber would label the Tigers a small-market team, at least by mindset, and bring into question whether they would find themselves in this situation again as other star players approach free agency. It’s much easier to push some, but not all, of their chips to the middle for the upcoming season and see what they can do with Skubal leading the way. Who knows when the next opportunity will come?
When I asked these sources what the Tigers should do, they seemed unsure about how Detroit was viewing the situation but leaned toward believing the Tigers would keep Skubal going into next season. That said, knowing what the market will bear is what Harris likes to do, so the drumbeat of Skubal being available in the right deal — or at least in the sense that Detroit would listen before hanging up — will likely continue.
2. Keep Skubal, but trade him at the deadline if the season doesn’t go as planned
In the event things go sideways during the first half of the 2026 season, everyone on our panel agreed that this was the right move. Defining what “going sideways” means with the expanded playoffs is hard, but battling for a wild-card spot around the trade deadline was where the gray area began for our panelists.
“You cannot, under any circumstances, hold Skubal through the trade deadline and miss the playoffs. That would be a catastrophe,” said one agent.
The haul would still be formidable for a rental deal — back-of-the-envelope math says two prospects ranking later in the top 100 or one elite young player, roughly speaking — but also because the offers would have to clear the bar of Detroit receiving a compensation pick just after the first round to even be considered, as that’s what the Tigers would get if Skubal walked in free agency (under the current free agency system).
Another rival executive has an informed theory on Harris’ focus: “He has his eyes set on 2027 and 2028 as his prime contending years.” If things go well in 2026, the window would expand to include it as well. Top prospects Kevin McGonigle and Max Clark, the No. 2 and No. 6 prospects in the sport, could be core players as soon as the second half of 2026, so aiming for things to really take off in 2027 is logical.
Opinions vary on whether Skubal would fetch more this winter or at the deadline because it’s hard to project how desperate a contender could hypothetically be at the deadline versus what that team would offer to get an entire season of Skubal plus a first-round pick when he walks. It’s safe to assume the return would likely be a bit less at the deadline.
3. Keep Skubal no matter what, try to extend him and take the draft pick if he ends up leaving
This would be a bold move in the era of the asset value-focused approach that so many teams are taking now. If Skubal were to walk in free agency, the compensation would likely be a draft pick in the 30s the following summer — and that’s it. That type of pick is valued at roughly $8-10 million of surplus value, depending on your source.
There is more value that would come before that for Detroit, but it’s hard to quantify. The Tigers would get another title run with the reigning back-to-back AL Cy Young winner and more time to convince him to stay in Detroit. Maybe that combination could make magic and both sides could land on a deal before he hits free agency. Skubal has said he wants to stay in Detroit, so you can’t rule it out. Another rival executive thinks Harris is focused on how to make this happen. “[Harris] will never believe he can’t sign Skubal.”
That being said, Skubal being represented by Scott Boras makes it unlikely he will sign a deal without at least testing the market, as Boras typically advises clients to hit free agency.
There’s one more variable, though, that is unique to the timing of Skubal’s free agency: the expected labor strife next winter, with the current CBA expiring on Dec. 1, 2026. It’s unlikely Boras wants Skubal to be on the market through a labor stoppage that would leave him potentially signing right before spring training after some teams have spent their available cash and with the economic model of the game potentially changing in a way that hurts Skubal’s market. One source said the CBA complication moves the odds that Skubal signs an extension before free agency from 0% to 10%.
The last time there was a labor stoppage hanging over free agency, we saw a frenzy of late-November deals before the Dec. 1 lockout. A similar quicker free agent process that ends with Skubal signing around Thanksgiving would give Detroit a slight leg up, given the familiarity and exclusive negotiating window before free agency, relative to a protracted, winter-long bidding war.
The contract marks to beat are Yamamoto’s $325 million guarantee that is the most ever for pitchers and Max Fried’s $218 million guarantee that is tops among left-handers all-time. Both of those contracts were landed by agencies other than Boras Corp., and setting precedents is a large part of how top agencies market themselves to potential nine-figure clients.
It’s also worth noting Skubal had Tommy John surgery in college and flexor tendon surgery in 2022, which are factors to consider when projecting a long-term deal in free agency.
Are Harris and the Tigers likely to win a straight bidding war with a precedent-setting guarantee? No, but if they can offer a shorter deal at an AAV record with opt-outs, they would at least have a path, albeit a narrow one, to keeping their ace.
The real issue for Detroit is their payroll. They finished last season with a $155 million competitive balance tax (CBT) payroll figure, over $90 million below the first CBT tax threshold. If Skubal will be getting an AAV in the $30 millions or even the low $40 millions, can the Tigers really justify giving a quarter of their payroll to one player? Would Harris do that, or would signing Skubal be part of a larger move to a payroll number that can justify fitting Skubal in there as the Tigers see their peak competitive window opening? If McGonigle and Clark show up late in 2026 and look like future stars, that won’t bump the payroll, but it could make the Tigers look more competitive going forward and that could help their long-term case to Skubal, as well.
This logic — if things go well in 2026, the Tigers will contend and hold onto Skubal through the season — is also why another executive mused on Detroit’s options if it traded Skubal at the deadline. “You could still trade [Skubal] and then sign him back long-term, but I can’t imagine the series of events where that would actually happen.”
There’s also the reading of the tea leaves for this winter. Some sources mentioned Detroit is targeting pitching depth early in free agency. Is that to backfill for a potential Skubal trade? A deal now or at the deadline? Or just to create depth for a title run like all contending teams need? Or to create leverage/depth so they have maximum optionality for all of 2026? You can see what you want to see when it comes to the Rorschach test that is the team-building conundrum of the winter.
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