Cubs BCB After Dark: Would you risk trading for Tarik Skubal?

Q: What are the potential benefits of trading for Tarik Skubal?

Trading for Tarik Skubal could enhance the Cubs' pitching rotation, providing a young and talented arm to bolster their roster.

Q: What are Tarik Skubal's current stats and performance in the MLB?

Tarik Skubal has shown promise as a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, with notable strikeout rates and potential for improvement.

Q: How would a trade for Tarik Skubal impact the Cubs' future?

Acquiring Skubal could set the Cubs up for long-term success by adding depth to their pitching staff and potentially improving their competitive standing.

Q: What do Cubs fans think about trading for Tarik Skubal?

Cubs fans have mixed opinions on trading for Skubal, with some excited about his potential and others concerned about the cost of the trade.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA - APRIL 29: Tarik Skubal #29 of the Detroit Tigers pitches in the second inning against the Atlanta Braves at Truist Park on April 29, 2026 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images) | Getty Images It’s Wednesday night here at *BCB After Dark: the hippest hangout for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad.* Come on in for a while. We always have a seat for a friend, new or old. There’s no cover charge. The hostess will seat you now. Bring your own beverage. *BCB After Dark* is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon. Last night I asked you what was your favorite home run of the season, so far? Fifty-eight percent of you picked Conforto’s walk-off, and that was to be expected. Another 22 percent picked Dansby Swanson’s two-run home run in the top of the ninth in Los Angeles that ended up beating the Dodgers. But in truth, the poll was just a good excuse to relive some terrific highlights of the 2026 season. So far, of course. Here’s the part with the music and the movies. You’re free to skip that if you want. You won’t hurt my feelings. Tonight we are honored to have jazz guitarist Julian Lage join us from Tokyo and the summer of 2025. Joining Lage is Jorge Roeder on bass and Dave King on drums. Before I we go on, I want to acknowledge the passing of former Atlanta Braves owner () Ted Turner. There are a lot of obituaries out there and I’m sure you can find one on your own. But I want to take a moment to thank him for the creation of Turner Classic Movies, which is the greatest gift anyone has ever given to the cinephile community. While much of the credit for what TCM is today should go to the people Turner hired to run the place, including longtime host Robert Osborne, it was Turner’s vision that created it. Turner bought the rights to a whole library of films, mostly from MGM, to show on his TBS Superstation in the eighties. More films than he could possibly show on a channel that also had Braves games and television reruns. Although he rightly got criticized for some of the early stuff that he did with those films, such as the colorization debate of the eighties, eventually he decided these films needed to be seen somewhere. So in 1994, Turner Classic Movies was launched as a commercial-free, uncut movie channel. Yes, they showed big hits like Turner’s favorite film *Gone With the Wind,* but they also showed tons of more obscure films that had mostly been forgotten. Nothing has been more instrumental in the preservation and distribution of the history of cinema than TCM. People smarter than me have said that you can get a film school education just by watching Turner Classic Movies, free with your cable or satellite subscription. If you ask me how I know so much about movies, I certainly have read some books and listened to the commentary tracks on the physical media I buy. I have a Criterion Channel subscription as well. But mostly, I just watch a lot of TCM. So thanks, Ted. Moving on. Last night, I watched my first Nancy Reagan movie, the 1950 *noir* *Shadow on the Wall*, directed by Patrick Jackson. I’ve seen plenty of films featuring Ronnie, but this is the first film I’ve ever seen with a future First Lady in it. Obviously Nancy’s career, under her maiden name of Nancy Davis, was not as extensive as Ronnie’s, who was a much-in-demand supporting actor during his career. But Nancy does a fine job in *Shadow on the Wall*, even if it’s not in a terribly challenging role. To be clear, Nancy Reagan is not the star of *Shadow on the Wall*. The film stars Ann Sothern, Zachary Scott and Gigi Perreau in a potboiler *noir* about a man, David Starrling (Scott), falsely convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of his wife. The only witness who can clear his name is his eight-year-old daughter Susan (Perreau), who has unfortunately blocked out the memory of the whole event because of the trauma. Davis (and I suppose I should call Nancy Reagan “Nancy Davis” from this point on) is in a supporting role as the psychologist trying to help Susan overcome her trauma and recover her memory. The setup of *Shadow on the Wall* is that David’s wife Celia (Kristine Miller) is cheating on him with the fiancé of her sister Dell (Sothern). David confronts Celia about the affair and Celia, wrongly thinking David is going to kill her (don’t ask), hits him over the head and knocks him out. Meanwhile, Dell has jealousy issues with her sister and the affair with her fiancé was the last straw. While David is out cold, Dell shoots and kills her sister. Little Susan sees all of this from the hallway, but the trauma of the event forces it from her memory. As far as the police are concerned, Celia and David were the only ones in the room. David wakes up with no memory of what happened and assumes the police are telling the truth when they tell him he murdered his wife. He’s tried, convicted, and given the death sentence. Davis shows up now as Dr. Caroline Canford, a child psychologist who tries to help Susan get through the trauma of seeing her mother murdered. In order to do that, she needs to get her to remember what happened. To be clear, Dr. Canford is not doing this to find out who really killed Celia, at least not at first. She’s just trying to get Susan through her PTSD (although she calls it “shell shock” in the terminology of the time). But eventually as Susan begins to remember more and more, the doctor starts to suspect that maybe David may be innocent and that only Susan can save her father’s life. Meanwhile, Sothern’s Dell needs to stop Susan from regaining her memory. As the girl’s closest-living relative (other than her father on death row), she puts on the charm offensive to try to get custody of her, which would make it all that much easier for Dell to kill Susan. So yeah, Sothern has the really good role here—playing a psychopath who murders her sister, lets her brother-in-law take the rap for her and is now trying to murder her niece. She plays it well and certainly Dell has some qualms about murdering her niece at first. But she’s so petrified of going to the chair herself that any moral issues she has slowly disappear as she becomes a monster. Dell’s first murder was just a crime of passion. Her attempts to murder Susan are just cold-blooded evil. Gigi Perreau has the only other really good part here as Susan. Yes, there’s a kind of artificiality to the way her character is written and she’s certainly too articulate for an eight-year old trauma patient. But that’s the way all kids in movies were written at the time. She’s better than most child actors of the era. As far as Nancy Davis goes, she’s fine? Good, even? Her psychologist character really has only one emotional state, concern and curiosity. There’s not a lot of range here, and that’s on the script. But she’s certainly believable as a concerned child psychologist and she handles the mid-century psychologist tropes with ease. This was Davis’ first big film role and were I watching this in 1950, I’d come away saying that she’s got a future as a fine character actress. Maybe she did. At no point did she ever tell Susan to “Just Say No,” in case you were wondering. Watching *Shadow on the Wall* reminded how much the theories of Freud was a major part of mid-century culture. The entire plot of *Shadow on the Wall* is about repressed memories and working towards catharsis. *Shadows on the Wall* is a decent *noir*, not a great one. If you like shadows in your *noir*, then they’re a major plot point here, as you might deduce from the title. But the biggest reasons to watch it is Sothern’s great performance as a murderess and because you want to see what kind of an actress Nancy Reagan was. *Shadow on the Wall* is available on HBO Max. The trailer for *Shadow on the Wall.* Since Nancy Davis was an unknown when this film was released, she’s barely in this trailer. You can get a quick glimpse of the future First Lady at the 42 second mark. Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies. The Tigers got bad news as the co-Best Pitcher on the Planet™ Tarik Skubal is going to have The Tigers are not putting a timetable on his return, but the normal timeframe on this is 2 to 3 months. This is just another twist to one of the biggest storylines of the season. This is Skubal’s walk year and he was likely looking at a $400 million contract on the free agent market this upcoming winter. Because of that high number, many thought the wisest course of action was for the Tigers to trade Skubal last winter rather than let him leave this winter for just a draft pick. However, understandably the Tigers didn’t do that. They made the playoffs as a Wild Card last year and advanced to the Division Series. They lost that when won the winner-take-all Game 5 in the 15th inning. It wasn’t unreasonable to think that, with Skubal, the Tigers could make the playoffs again and have a decent chance to make it to the World Series. Skubal’s injury puts a dent in those plans. As I write this, the Tigers are a game under .500. Of course, in the weak AL Central, that puts them in a tie for first place. As long as the Tigers are in spitting distance of the playoffs, they’re not going to trade Skubal at the deadline. *Fangraphs* gives them a 57 percent chance of making the playoffs, although I don’t think that number takes the Skubal injury into consideration. But let’s assume that the Tigers do fall out of the playoff hunt in July and they decide to trade Skubal. There’s no guarantee of that, but it’s possible. The problem is, it’s unlikely that Skubal will be back on the mound before they have to make that decision. Yes, if Skubal comes back in exactly two months, that would have him return in early July with three weeks to go before the deadline. The problem is that there is no reason to think Skubal will only be out the minimum. In fact, it’s in both the Tigers’ and Skubal’s best interests to make sure he’s 100% before he takes the mound. For the Tigers, if they have any chance of making some noise in October, they need Skubal at full strength for the playoffs. He gives them a chance to win any series, but only if he doesn’t re-injure himself trying to come back early. For Skubal, he’s got about 400 million reasons to make sure he doesn’t re-injure himself before he hits the market this winter. He also wants to look good in every start he has left in Detroit. So assuming that the Tigers decide to trade Skubal and assuming that he doesn’t make it off the injured list before the trade deadline, are you still willing to give the Tigers a haul for Skubal? This assumes that the medical prognosis is that Skubal is likely to return to the mound sometime around Labor Day, or at least before the playoffs. Of course, with injuries, there are no guarantees. So the risk of trading for Skubal is that you have to give up multiple Top 100 prospects for maybe a month of the regular season and the playoffs of the co-Best Pitcher on the Planet™. The upside is that Skubal returns to what he was before the injury and he becomes the ace the team needs in the playoffs. He starts a few must-win games and the Cubs’ chances of winning the World Series goes way up. The downside is that he comes back and he’s not the pitcher that he was before surgery. Or worse, he doesn’t come back at all or he comes back and injures himself again and doesn’t pitch in the playoffs. Then he leaves for a $400 million contract with the Dodgers or when the season ends. The Cubs farm system gets stripped for a bag of magic beans. Any team that trades for Skubal is going to be buying what’s behind door number three without knowing if it’s a new car or a zonk. It’s impossible to guess what it would cost in trade capital to acquire Skubal without knowing how his recovery is going. But the Tigers aren’t going to give him away cheap. The price, I would think, begins with two top 100 prospects. For the Cubs, that means something like Jaxon Wiggins and Pedro Ramírez. Or maybe Josiah Hartshorn and Jefferson Rojas. Since those players are closer to the bottom of the top 100 lists than the mid-section, there might be another throw-in prospect, but let’s just take it as two top 100 prospects for now. All this for a guy who is almost certain to leave after the season and for whom the Cubs will only be able to hope that he’ll be back to Cy Young form by October. The cost would be high. The risk factor is high. The payoff is potentially huge. Would you make that kind of deal? Thank you to everyone who stopped by tonight and all week. I appreciate every one of you who takes the time to join us. Please get home safely. Call a ride if you need to. Don’t forget any personal items. Recycle any cans and bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again next week for more *BCB After Dark.*