Tarik Skubal’s arbitration case could be a scary foreshadowing of Brewers' future

Wouldn't it be nice to have the kind of money to sign a two-time All-Star pitcher to a $38.3 million AAV and then turn around and pay the best pitcher in the world $32 million?

That's not the Los Angeles Dodgers I'm talking about, either — that's the week the Detroit Tigers have had, signing Framber Valdez in free agency and losing their arbitration case against Tarik Skubal.

Of course, the latter transaction wasn't met with as much celebration as the former, seeing as the Tigers tried to low-ball their incumbent ace amidst myriad trade rumors. Alas, the arbitration system held up, and Skubal was awarded his just due.

So, how on earth does this whole situation affect the Milwaukee Brewers?

Tarik Skubal sets eye-opening new arbitration precedent for Brewers' young pitchers

From an objective standpoint, Skubal obviously deserved to win this case. He's the reigning back-to-back Cy Young Award winner in the American League and either the first or second-best pitcher in all of baseball. He may not be worth $32 million as an arbitration-eligible player, but the Tigers did this to themselves when they offered him a laughable $19 million (a mere $1 million more than Jameson Taillon will earn this year, for reference). It was a far more egregious handling of an arbitration process between a team and their star pitcher than the Corbin Burnes debacle a few years ago.

However, that $32 million salary just reset the market for arbitration-eligible pitchers. And while the Brewers aren't dealing with any of those at the moment, their entire rotation (save for Brandon Woodruff) is comprised of high-upside youngsters, who will enter the arbitration process in the coming years.

What happens if Jacob Misiorowski or Logan Henderson develops into a perennial All-Star? Yes, they'll probably get traded on the cusp of free agency, but this kind of market reset could push that timeline up even further. Skubal earned just $10.15 million last year in his second season of arbitration before making a $22 million jump this time around; with salaries escalating at such a rapid rate across baseball, this poses a lot of financial challenges for a small-market team like the Brewers.

Now, the good(?) news on this front is that a lockout is coming. The economics of the sport will change, from free agency to arbitration years to perhaps even 40-man roster rules and Rule 5 Draft statuses. Caps and floors may be instituted to protect teams like the Brewers from exponentially rising player costs.

But even in that case, there will still be a payroll disparity between them and the Dodgers and Tigers of the world. It's a testament to their brilliance that the Crew haven't fallen off despite trading away Burnes, Freddy Peralta, and Devin Williams while they were still under contract, but if arbitration salaries start to look more like the free agent contracts of today's MLB, the job of the Brewers' front office will only get more and more difficult.

Hopefully, this new arbitration market leads to meaningful changes that benefit the small-market teams of MLB, rather than widening the gap between the haves and have-nots.