Just checked this thread for the first time in awhile and I figured I'd respond to this as I'm the one that ended up getting Skenes in that trade.
I will stick up for myself when it comes to someone calling it collusion and when the term cheating gets thrown around.
The only person I've ever had any real correspondence with about trades is Tokamak. I don't even know who runs the majority of the teams in this league.
And the funny thing is that I didn't even propose that trade (and believe me, I proposed a lot of them). It was proposed to me (see the screenshot).
I didn't realize until just now checking this thread that people were upset about it, so I'll go ahead and sit Skenes out the rest of the year.
In my mind, whoever proposed the trade was hard up for closers and chasing saves and Skenes only had ~8 starts left. But, you'd have to ask them to know for sure what the motive was behind it.