DETROIT — The questions are coming every day now.

“My consecutive streak is alive of having to answer a Tarik Skubal question every day for like three months,” manager AJ Hinch said before the game Thursday.

The trade deadline is Aug. 3. There is a world where Skubal’s start Friday night against the Royals could be his last as a Tiger.

“That might be a reality,” Skubal said. “But, also, five days later is another start for me at home.”

That’s the crux of it all. Nobody knows what’s going to happen between now and the deadline. The Tigers have played themselves back to the fringes of the playoff race. They entered the game Thursday with a 26-16 record since June 1.

Yet, Skubal remains in the eye of the storm of trade rumors.

“That stuff is out of my control,” he said. “I am going to do my best to put our team in a position to win a baseball game tomorrow. That’s all I can ask myself to do.”

For the record, Skubal doesn’t want to get traded. He wants to finish the season with the Tigers.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think we have a chance to win a World Series. I’ve said that since spring training and that’s never changed. That belief in this team has never changed. We put ourselves in a tough situation, but I think we’ve come out of it playing really good baseball. Going into spring training, the whole offseason, I’ve never been more motivated to win a World Series for this city and for this team that drafted me in 2018 and helped me develop.

“That’s always been the goal and that won’t change until I am on a different team.”

The noise is going to keep getting louder with each passing day. Speculating on potential trade scenarios, even if they aren’t real, is relatively harmless. But it’s different when the speculation turns into negative and false accusations.

“A lot of things that are said about me aren’t true,” he said.

He was asked to clarify something he told The Athletic earlier in the week. The article, in which reporter Cody Stavenhagen took great pains to keep it all in proper perspective, quoted Skubal talking about knowing something was wrong with his elbow in January.

“If I could go back, I probably should have got an MRI in January and hammered it out to where I was done with it in the offseason,” Skubal said in the article. “But there were also other factors in play. I was going through arbitration. The decision by the organization to take me to court, I think that probably had some impact subconsciously.”

That quote took on a life of its own, which is why Skubal was asked about it Thursday.

“I think it’s just hindsight,” he said. “It’s just common sense. I thought we were trending in the right direction through the whole process. I had a hiccup in January. I didn’t know what was going on. I thought it was just some different soreness. I’d never dealt with any of that before. But we were trending in the right way.”

Thus, he said there was no thought of having an MRI at that time.

“We were trending in the right way,” he said. “I continued to make starts and I continued to be a good player and I felt I was doing a good job for the team. Then we had the incident in Atlanta and it didn’t feel great the next few days and we had the MRI and the surgery.

“Of course in hindsight I would’ve got an MRI in January if I knew this wasn’t going to get better. But I thought it was getting better for three months until it wasn’t.”

Going into arbitration, the Tigers submitted an offer for $19 million and Skubal, through agent Scott Boras, submitted an offer for $32 million. Skubal was awarded $32 million, the largest ever awarded to a player in the history of the process.

Skubal, who admitted that the hearing was tough to sit through, was asked if it had soured him at all toward the Tigers’ organization.

“When you take a player to arbitration, there’s not a ton of positive things that come out of that process, relationship-wise,” he said. “I think that’s pretty obvious. But my relationship with the coaching staff and the players, my teammates, it’s the same as it always is. That’s how it’s supposed to be.”

Skubal had nothing to do with the two sides getting to the point of arbitration. As was reported at the time, there was virtually no negotiation between the Tigers and Boras leading up to hearing. The Tigers submitted an initial, low-end proposal and never got a counter proposal from Boras.

“As far as going through that process, sitting in that room, you guys should experience that for yourself,” he said. “Not enjoyable. But it is what it is. It’s the business of the game. Business and baseball are two separate things and I try to keep them separate. I feel like I’ve done a good job with that.”

Hinch, who is also doing his level best to shield Skubal from the noise, agrees.

“So many people have thoughts and questions and opinions on all of that,” Hinch said. “And yet it doesn’t impact anything we are doing on the field. To get nostalgic or emotional or attached to some perceived maybe-maybe-not scenario is a ton of wasted energy.

“Tarik is doing a really good job of centralizing his energy toward the next start. I just wish we’d let it get to the baseball and see what happens. There’s 10 days between now and the deadline and I have no idea what’s going to happen. And tomorrow, I’m not going to have any idea what’s going to happen. Just trying to keep our team focused on what’s in front of us.”

Skubal was asked if he was at all intrigued about being traded to a team with better odds of making a long playoff run.

“I don’t know if I believe that,” he said. “I don’t if I believe the odds. I’ve been on a team that had a 0.2% chance to make the playoffs and we did. I’m not speculating on percentages. It’s really hard to win a World Series. You just have to get in. And I think this team has all the pieces to be able to do that.”

His heart is still here.

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