prospect

The manager of the team that most needed Tarik Skubal sat in his office Sunday at Angel Stadium. The Milwaukee Brewers, the team that opened play Sunday with the best record in the major leagues, did not get Skubal.

The Dodgers did. Of course they did.

“L.A. is America’s team,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said.

Not based on the cries from across America, from fans outraged that the Dodgers helped themselves to the best available talent yet again to baseball insiders mystified that the Detroit Tigers could not land a better return for Skubal than the three prospects the Dodgers swapped, or at least taken a couple more days to pursue a better return.

“Was I rooting for the Dodgers to get Skubal? Personally, no,” Angels pitcher Brent Suter said. “I was hoping another team that hadn’t won the World Series the past couple of years was going to get him.”

Suter pitched for the Brewers for seven years.

Pitcher Tarik Skubal walks to the dugout during a matchup between the Tigers and the Orioles Wednesday in Detroit.

(Paul Sancya / Associated Press)

“They have a loaded farm system,” he said. “I thought they were going to get him.”

The road to the World Series runs through Los Angeles. The Brewers also posted the best record in the majors last year, then the Dodgers swept them in the National League Championship Series.

In last year’s NLCS, the Brewers started an opener twice, Freddy Peralta once and José Quintana once. In a five- or seven-game series this October, the Brewers could have started Jacob Misiorowski twice and Skubal twice.

That could have mitigated the Dodgers’ huge advantage in slugging. The Dodgers have seven players in double digits in home runs. The Brewers have four.

But any and all statistics obscure the larger point: If you’re a Brewers fan, when is your year?

The Brewers never have won a World Series. They are in line for their eighth playoff appearance in nine years.

Sustainable success is nice, and difficult to achieve. Much credit to the Brewers, who play in baseball’s smallest market.

But the point of the game is to win the World Series. If you’re not going all in when you have the best record in the majors for the second consecutive year, when are you going all in?

If not now, when?

“I know we made our efforts, too,” Murphy said. “I trust the way we operate. I understand the way we operate.”

Milwaukee Brewers infield players celebrate after defeating the Angels Saturday at Angel Stadium.

(William Liang / Associated Press)

This is all the more maddening in Milwaukee because, in 2008, the Brewers tried their best. That July, they traded four prospects for Hall of Fame pitcher CC Sabathia. Only one, outfielder Michael Brantley, developed into a productive major leaguer. That’s the norm, not the exception, in multiprospect trade packages.

As it turned out, the Brewers lost in the first round of the playoffs, and Sabathia did not survive the fourth inning of his lone postseason start. Then he signed with the New York Yankees. So what? The Brewers went for it, and their fans believed.

After the trade for Skubal, Fangraphs increased the Dodgers’ chance to win the World Series from 25% to 31%. That still means a two out of three chance the Dodgers do not win.

“He’s an amazing player,” Suter said, “but it doesn’t mean a guaranteed World Series. It doesn’t guarantee anything.”

I could not believe the number of fans that reached out to say small-market teams could not match the Dodgers’ proposal because they had little chance to re-sign Skubal as a free agent.

Again, so what? We’re playing to win the World Series, not the Baseball America prospect rankings.

The Brewers, with small-market resources, touted former Angels infielder Luis Rengifo as a significant winter free-agent signing. The Dodgers countered with Edwin Díaz and Kyle Tucker.

“L.A. is America’s team and has all the big names,” Murphy said. “Now they just added to that, with maybe the best pitcher in the game, certainly one of the greats in this era.”

If the Brewers and Dodgers meet again in October, Murphy will only be too happy to tell us who the underdog is.

“It’s going to be David and Goliath,” Murphy said. “We haven’t earned that right yet. We haven’t got there yet.

“If we get there, I’m sure the narrative will be pretty similar: the haves and the have-nots.”

Murphy wanted to make one thing perfectly clear: Fans across America might despise the Dodgers, but he does not.

“They’ve got a bunch of great dudes,” he said. “Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts, Teoscar [Hernández]. I don’t know [Shohei] Ohtani. He doesn’t even know who I am. But I feel like Ohtani is a great dude. I can just tell by his presence.

“How can you not love [Max] Muncy? Doc [manager Dave Roberts] is my good friend. [Coach Dino] Ebel, we’ve got his whole family playing for the Brewers.”

The Brewers made first-round picks of Ebel’s sons Brady and Trey over the past two years, paying $5.55 million in signing bonuses. The Ebel boys are top prospects. They can look forward to a long stay in Milwaukee.

Your team could have done this.

Is baseball headed for a lockout this winter? Yes.

Because the Dodgers traded for Tarik Skubal? No.

The Dodgers play a video before each home game, which includes these words from a sinister-sounding voice: “You need teams like us to point your finger and say, ‘That’s the bad guy.’ ”

In this case, “you” means the owners of the other 29 teams. You can hear them wailing now: Baseball is rigged, and only a salary cap can unrig the sport. The Dodgers are the back-to-back champions, and they just picked up the best player on the trade market.

They. Have. Too. Much. Damn. Money.

But here’s the thing: All the money the Dodgers lavish upon their major league roster isn’t what made the trade for Skubal possible.

Oh, all that money helped put them in position to where Skubal could help them in October, but Skubal could have helped the Milwaukee Brewers or the Chicago Cubs or the Tampa Bay Rays or the Atlanta Braves or the New York Yankees or the Philadelphia Phillies.

When the Detroit Tigers took bids for Skubal, they liked the Dodgers’ offer the best. And here is what the Dodgers offered: three prospects, none a first-rounder, none ranked among baseball’s top 20 prospects.

Outfielder Zyhir Hope was drafted in the 11th round, by the Cubs. When the Cubs needed a corner infielder, the Dodgers shipped them a surplus major leaguer, Michael Busch, in exchange for two prospects. One was Hope, whose professional experience was limited to 11 games of rookie ball.

Pitcher River Ryan was drafted in the 11th round, by the San Diego Padres. When the Padres needed a left-handed bat that could play the outfield, the Dodgers shipped them a surplus major leaguer, Matt Beaty, for a prospect that had yet to make his professional debut, Ryan.

Pitcher Brady Smith was drafted in the third round, by the Dodgers. This is his second professional season.

The Dodgers developed Hope and Ryan from minor leaguers into top prospects, and the Tigers hope some of that Dodgers development dust has rubbed off on Smith.

Tarik Skubal delivers during a game between the Detroit Tigers and the Baltimore Orioles on July 29.

(Paul Sancya / Associated Press)

For now? The prospect rankings on the league website put Hope at No. 25 and Ryan at No. 68. The Baseball America prospect rankings put Hope at No. 55, with Ryan outside the top 100. Neither ranking includes Smith among the top 100.

As Baseball America editor-in-chief J.J. Cooper wrote, Hope was the third-best outfielder on the Dodgers’ double-A team.

That might be the greatest testament of all to the Dodgers’ player development system, particularly considering all of their winning means they draft at the end of every round, every year.

Maybe the trio of prospects never pans out, at least not the way the Tigers hope. Two of three prospects traded at the deadline never do, according to Baseball America research.

Will money come into play here? Yes, but not yet. Skubal is a free agent at the end of the season, and not every team could afford $300 million or $400 million or so to sign him to a long-term contract.

But, for these final months of the season, the cost to pay Skubal is $9 million. Any team can do that. And, if the owner of your team tells you he could not have done that, the proper response would be to laugh, and then chant “Sell the team!”

And, as the Brewers and Cleveland Guardians and Tampa Bay Rays prove just about every year, any team can afford to build an excellent player development system.

Look, I am not going to try to tell you that every team could sign Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts and Edwin Díaz and Kyle Tucker.

But the New York Mets, in the largest market in the major leagues, certainly could. Their Saturday was not spent trading for Skubal. It was spent taking trade offers for players on their last-place team and commemorating the 40th anniversary of their 1986 World Series championship team — their last championship team.

In Anaheim, the last-place team in the second-largest market in the major leagues lost to the Brewers, the team in the smallest market in the major leagues — and, as of Saturday, the team with the best record in the majors.

Market size need not be destiny, if you can scout and sign and coach and develop players. The owners could learn from that, but it’s easier to point at the Dodgers and say, “That’s the bad guy.”

Instead, some poor league employee probably stayed up late Saturday night, planning how to splice clips of Skubal wearing a Dodgers uniform into the “Level the Playing Field” ad campaign the owners are running to persuade fans to take their side in collective bargaining. Imagine what they could do with clips of Skubal waving to fans in a championship parade.