As Major League Baseball’s regular season draws to a close, the main storyline is the Los Angeles Dodgers. No, it’s not the untold amounts of money they’re spending in search of a third consecutive title. Not exactly anyway. The story is Tarik Skubal, the ace pitcher they acquired from the Detroit Tigers at the trade deadline. But even he isn’t the entire story. The other part—the main part—is the espresso machine Skubal took with him from the Tigers locker room.
We first covered the maybe-theft a few weeks back. Earlier in the season, Skubal and then-teammate Casey Mize went in on an espresso machine together for clubhouse use. Both have since been traded, but on his way out the door, Skubal took the machine with him. He blamed his wife for it.
“I wanted to leave it and get a new one, but she wouldn’t let me,” Skubal told the Athletic. “My wife was like, ‘That was too expensive to just run the charge back.’”
The question then became: what was the espresso machine? And since then two wildly different stories have emerged. Thanks to some internet sleuthing by TikTok user Jade Van Kley, videos have been uncovered from earlier this year with Skubal and Mize pulling shots of espresso. It’s quick, but in it you can pretty clearly make out that the machine is by Casa Brews. The exact model is the Ultra, which retails for a cool $200.
It’s not a terrible machine or anything. It’s even got the stamp of approval from 2023 World Barista Champion Borum Um. But absconding with a $200 machine when you’re making $32 million a year? The math, as the kids say, ain’t mathing.
A week later, Mize came to Skubal’s defense. Per Yahoo, he states that, “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.” He goes on to clarify that the Casa Brews machine in the clubhouse is not the espresso machine in question.
So what machine is it? $10K puts it above La Marzocco Linea Mini or GS/3 territory and below a standard one-group Leva or Strada price point. Maybe they’re custom numbers? It’s not a Kees van der Westen Speedster. Could it be a one-group Slayer or the Victoria Arduino E1 Prima?
We’ve reached out directly to Skubal and Mize for clarification but they’re both too busy throwing a ball really hard to respond to a DM. Thus the mystery remains, but we’re on the case. We will find out what espresso machine Tarik Skubal has. And when we do, you’ll be the first to know.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
