Everything Dodgers President Said About Tarik Skubal Trade, Backlash, Impact on Shohei Ohtani's Role

The Los Angeles Dodgers got their man, and he was the one player they were ready to aggressively target before Monday's trade deadline.

Los Angeles president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman told reporters Sunday he started discussing a trade for Tarik Skubal with the Detroit Tigers on Friday and then became much more aggressive in his approach Saturday.

He also said Skubal was the one player the Dodgers wanted to aggressively pursue ahead of this year's deadline.

The trade eventually happened when they acquired Skubal from the Tigers in exchange for outfielder Zyhir Hope and right-handed pitchers River Ryan and Brady Smith. That means arguably the best pitcher in the game who took home the last two American League Cy Young awards is going to the team that won the last two World Series titles.

It also means the Dodgers could trot out a rotation of Skubal, Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow when everyone is healthy. It is difficult to envision any team defeating that rotation in a playoff series, which has surely led to some frustration from fans of other teams around the league.

Along those lines, Friedman told reporters that he "passionately disagrees" with the idea the Dodgers are ruining baseball (9:30 mark).

This wasn't a case of Los Angeles simply offering a free-agent contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars, though. Any team in the league could have discussed a trade with the Tigers, but it was the two-time reigning champions who got the deal done.

The question now is when Skubal will be joined by Ohtani in the rotation, as the latter hasn't pitched since July 3 as he deals with injury concerns.

"We're as confident as we can be that he's going to be back and he's gonna start throwing soon, building back up," Friedman said Sunday when discussing Ohtani (6:15 mark). "You can never perfectly predict the future, but if you said, 'Hey, place a bet on it,' I would be very confident placing it that he will be back pitching.

"I guess from my standpoint, I really hope we get to the end of the season and everyone's healthy and feeling good and strong. And that's the best kind of tough decision and figuring that out that we could possibly have. And we would welcome it."

As for Skubal, Friedman told reporters the plan is for him to make his Dodger debut on Tuesday against the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field.

At this point, anything less than another World Series crown would be a surprise.