Tarik Skubal’s Dodgers tenure was hit with controversy last month.
It was reported that the two-time Cy Young winner took his espresso machine from Detroit that he had bought for the Tigers clubhouse at the start of the 2026 season. Skubal had received much unwarranted backlash for the decision to take it to LA after he was traded to the Dodgers at the deadline.
“I’ll wear it,” he said to reporters about the situation during his return to Detroit at the end of August. “I did buy it, but I guess I’ll wear it.”
Skubal revealed his wife, Jessica, encouraged him to take the $10,000 espresso machine to LA, stating that it was “too expensive to just run the charge back.”
A former teammate of Skubal’s, Casey Mize, defended the decision.
“I’m gonna have my boy Skubes’ back here for a second,” Mize said to The San Diego Union Tribune’s Annie Heilbrunn, “because in spring training I bought a little $200 machine because we didn’t like some of our coffee options in spring. We needed some espresso. And he said, ‘I’m gonna get us a really nice one in Detroit.’
“It took a while for it to ship and get in. He had just gotten it dialed in, I think maybe a month before the trade deadline. And this machine is like $10,000. It’s a very expensive machine. He had just got it the way he wanted. So he was like, ‘Yeah, sorry, I’m gonna take it with me.’ Which I totally understand.”
Like Skubal, Mize was also a Tigers pitcher to be traded to the NL West at the deadline. The right-hander now plays for the Dodgers’ division rivals, the Padres.
But Mize still came to Skubal’s defense.
“It’s kind of blown up a little bit,” Mize said of Skubal’s infamous decision to take the espresso machine. “So thanks, Skube, for getting that machine for us. And I understand you taking it with you. It’s OK by me.”
