When Tarik Skubal returns to Detroit on Friday night, memories will undoubtedly flood back of his rise with the Tigers: from unheralded prospect, to promising young talent, to the two-time Cy Young Award-winning face of the franchise.

To those who have followed the left-hander’s career the longest, however, the story of his fall remains just as important.

Long before he reached superstar status in Detroit, or became a blockbuster trade deadline acquisition for the Dodgers, or even established himself as a promising big-league talent with a high-velocity fastball and swing-and-miss changeup, Skubal was an intriguing-but-unheralded prospect entering his senior year of college — hoping to go much higher in the MLB draft than he ultimately did.

Dave Dangler remembers that Skubal, the one with the long hair and inconsistent command but clearly identifiable potential.

As a Pacific Northwest area scout for the Tigers, Dangler had followed the southpaw’s time at Seattle University — the only Division I school to offer Skubal coming out of high school in tiny Kingman, Arizona, — as he went from freshman All-American to sophomore-season Tommy John recipient to high-round hopeful as a senior.

“This guy,” Dangler recalled thinking to himself, “is interesting.”

Entering Skubal’s senior season in 2018, Dangler wasn’t alone in that opinion.

Skubal was seen as a potential sleeper by some in the scouting community. His college pitching coach, Elliott Cribby, believed he even had a route to becoming a first-round pick.

But then, early in that comeback campaign, he struggled to find a feel with his surgically repaired arm.

There was one game Dangler watched on a snowy night in Seattle, when Skubal’s erratic command led to six walks in four innings.

“A lot of people were grumbling in the stands, scout-wise,” Dangler recalled.

There was another clunker during a tournament in Florida, moving Skubal so far down many teams’ draft boards that a resurgent finish to his season only salvaged so much.

“That place was loaded with radar guns and decision-makers,” Cribby recounted of that start, which included five more walks in three innings. “And it was not a good outing for him.”

Dangler, however, kept tabs on the young pitcher, not ready to personally write him off as he worked through the rust.

Cribby passed along rave reviews about Skubal’s competitiveness and character. Dangler also saw his overwhelming stuff start to return by the season’s end, when he struck out 80 batters in his last 54 innings.

“Hey, this guy’s improving,” he wrote in one of his draft reports. “We could have something here.”

In the Tigers’ draft meetings, West Coast supervisor Marti Wolever, who also saw Skubal at the end of that year, further vouched for the lefty. On draft night, representatives from Skubal’s agency, Boras Corporation, also reportedly lobbied Detroit’s front office to take a flier on their client.

Ultimately, the Tigers made Skubal their ninth-round selection.

And while it was a disappointing draft fall, it helped set the stage for an even more stunning rise.

“It was a great landing spot,” Cribby, now head coach at Hawaii-Hilo, said of Skubal slipping to Detroit in hindsight. “He got developed, he got time, and clearly, he’s risen to the top now.”

“It was sort of the perfect mix,” Skubal’s father, Russ, echoed.

Indeed, eight years since the draft that changed his life, Skubal’s baseball world has been flipped upside down again. 

After a historic run of dominance in Detroit, the pending free agent was dealt to the Dodgers at this year’s deadline.

And on Friday, he will return to Comerica Park to pitch against the Tigers less than a month later.

The emotions on Friday night are expected to be raw. While Skubal has repeatedly reiterated how much he “thoroughly enjoyed my time in Detroit,” some fans remain disgruntled that he never signed a long-term contract extension (even though the Tigers never made him a serious offer, either).

“I think what happened,” Skubal said earlier this month of the trade, which also came in the wake of a contentious arbitration battle this offseason, “is just the business of baseball.”

Still, at its core, Friday also figures to feature plenty of gratitude between Skubal and his former club.  

If he hadn’t dropped to the Tigers in the draft, after all, he might not have blossomed into arguably the sport’s best pitcher now.

“They were in rebuild mode, they were looking for talent and they needed talent to come up quickly,” Russ Skubal noted. “If he had been with another organization, maybe he wouldn’t have been up in the bigs so soon.”

Instead, once Skubal got an opportunity, he made sure not to waste it.

He debuted in the majors in 2020, after quickly emerging as one of the club’s top minor-league prospects. He had another injury setback in 2022, when he underwent a flexor tendon procedure. But since returning again in late 2023, his 2.49 ERA has been best in the majors.

For that, much credit goes to Skubal himself — for how he improved his mechanics, added what is now a trademark changeup and honed a fiery mound presence in which he skips off the rubber and roars in key moments.

But as a late-blooming talent who’d been overlooked since his high school days, those close to him could tell he was indebted to his environment within the Tigers organization, too. 

“He got some really good coaching,” Russ said. “And I think the other thing that happened was, he found really good prospects he became friends with.”

That latter point will only add to Friday’s emotions. While two of Skubal’s closest Tigers teammates, catcher Jake Rogers and fellow prospect-turned-rotation mate Casey Mize, were shipped out by the Tigers at the deadline, he has been through fires with the rest of the team, too, which emerged from a rebuild a few years ago only to experience Game 5 heartbreak in the American League Division Series the last two seasons.

“I love all those guys,” Skubal said. “I’ve been competing with them for so long, it’ll be new to compete against them.”

Added Russ, already able to predict his son’s adrenaline: “He’ll be a little more fired up. I’m guessing it’s going to be like when he used to play his brothers in the street in basketball.”

Skubal is in the process of building new relationships in Los Angeles, of course. Manager Dave Roberts was effusive in his praise for the way Skubal has acclimated this week.

“I think that whole ‘be where your feet are’ adage, I think that’s just who he is,” Roberts said. “Some people have a hard time letting go. But I think that Tarik is a guy that, wherever he’s at, he’s all in.”

That doesn’t mean, however, a sense of awkwardness won’t abound in his return to Detroit.

“Even for me, it’s weird, because I have all this Tigers gear in my closet and now it’s like, ‘What do I do with that?’” Russ quipped. “It’s almost like a divorce.”

But then again, it was the serendipitous marriage of Skubal and the Tigers in the first place that elevated them both.

“He’s always been grateful for the chance to play, that the organization took a chance on him, that he had good coaches,” Russ said. “He’s a pretty grounded guy. But there’s a loyalty and sense of gratitude.”

On Friday, he’ll have to channel it all while pitching against the Tigers for the first time.

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