Tarik Skubal arbitration mess shows why Astros must extend Hunter Brown

With the likely departure of Framber Valdez, the Houston Astros are set to continue a long trend of letting their homegrown talent walk in free agency. Carlos Correa is back now, but his original exit from Houston was a seismic shift with Alex Bregman and George Springer being other notables from years past to leave as well. If the Astros want to reverse that trend when it comes to Hunter Brown's future, they may want to look at what is happening in Detroit as a cautionary tale.

While Brown is still in the early stages of his career, Tigers ace Tarik Skubal has established himself as arguably the best pitcher in baseball and Detroit failed to reach a long-term deal with him until this point. Now, Skubal is singlehandedly pressure-testing the arbitration process in filing at a potentially record-setting figure and all but confirming that he is going to leave the Tigers after the 2026 season.

If the Astros aren't careful, the same fate could await them when it comes to Brown in the next few years.

The Astros need to act quickly if they want to keep Hunter Brown around and avoid a Tarik Skubal-level mess

Weirdly enough, the early portions of both pitchers' careers are pretty similar. Skubal took a little while to get his footing not unlike Brown and their ages vs. year of arbitration match up shockingly closely. Skubal is a lefty and has more injuries on his resume, but that comparisons are kind of uncanny beyond that.

In Skubal's first year of arbitration, he ended up getting $2.65 million in 2024 while Brown just settled with the Astros for $5.71 million. In what will be Skubal's last year of arbitration this season, the Tigers just filed at $19 million while Skubal's camp led by agent Scott Boras is aiming to get an eye-popping $32 million. You see the problem now?

Even if Skubal's loses his arbitration case (which, as a multiple Cy Young Award winner, is not certain whatsoever), Brown is on track for a massive payday in arbitration. He might not end up with the same hardware that Skubal has, but the dominance at the front of the rotation is somewhat comparable and arbitration salaries trend upward each year just due to inflation.

Unfortunately, it is entirely possible that the Astros already missed their opportunity with Brown. When he wasn't quite as good, Brown seemed to be open to a long-term deal, but Houston declined in the moment just to see where things went. Now, Brown has hired Boras as well to be his agent and he has all the leverage with his performance the last couple of years. There is still time to fix this blunder, but not as much time as you might think.