Sources are reporting that the Dodgers have just picked up two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell, for five years / $182M (including a massive $52M signing bonus:
Snell joins a starting rotation that will feature Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow and Shohei Ohtani. The Dodgers are looking to add another starter this winter, with Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki among the many targets. It’s a starting rotation that is expected to be much improved from last season.
By joining Los Angeles, Snell is reunited with president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, who was the executive vice president of baseball operations for the Rays when the lefty was drafted in the first round by Tampa Bay in 2011.The Dodgers’ priority this winter was to add an ace to their starting rotation, and they identified Snell as their top target. The Dodgers previously pursued Snell before he signed with the Giants in March and again prior to the Trade Deadline as San Francisco fell out of postseason contention. They finally got their man on Tuesday.
The move, early in the offseason, provides the Dodgers more stability to a rotation that is poised to lose Jack Flaherty and Walker Buehler to free agency. Plus, it gets us a lefty, which is key. And I am comforted by how MLB.com's Mike Petriello broke it down:
Of course, “starters going deep” isn’t exactly in vogue any longer, so this might not matter to the Dodgers. What Snell offers is excellent fastball velocity (95.9 mph, fourth-hardest among lefty starters) and three outstanding swing-and-miss pitches, as his changeup, slider, and curve all had whiff rates above 40%. There were a handful of pitchers (min. 150 pitches of that type) who had two pitches like that last year, like Griffin Jax’s sweeper and changeup. Snell was the only one with three. So long as you can live with the five-inning starts, the occasional inconsistency, and the near-refusal to just throw strikes -- it’s fair to say he’s more entertaining to look at on the stat sheet than to actually view on the mound -- it’s hard to find a more effective per-pitch starter than Snell.So far as what Snell offers, it’s no mystery. He’s probably not going to throw as many innings as you want (he’s topped 130 innings just twice in nine seasons), but the innings he does throw are going to be extremely effective. Over the last three years, 216 starters have thrown 2,000 pitches, and Snell ranks first in batting average and second (to Paul Skenes) in slugging, tied-fifth in strikeout rate, and so he’s sixth overall in wOBA, an OPS-like metric. He’s really good, is the point, even if far too many walks and nibbling around the zone drives up the pitch count and prevents those deeper outings.
Still, the Snell signing is a little hard for this Dodgers fan to comprehend, given Snell has been a consistent foil for the Dodgers in all of his stops--and we've consistently beaten him. Most notably, there's his tenure with the Rays, when Snell's early exit in a World Series Game 6 5.1 IP performance led to the Dodgers' seventh World Championship title.
Snell then went to the Padres from 2021-2023, where he went 2-2 against the Dodgers in 12 starts--prime evidence on how shallow Snell pitches into games. And then lasr year as a Giant, Snell was 0-0 against the Dodgers in one start, in a season where he had 20 appearances and only went 5-3 (with three wins coming in his last three starts), with a total of 104 IP. That's barely more innings pitched than Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who (like Snell) also missed a good chunk of 2024 on the IL.
And now (at least, pending a physical), Snell is on the Dodgers. Maybe he plays better and goes deeper into games in 2025, having resolved his signing status earlier in the offseason than last year's debacle (a March 2024 signing set him back on his Spring Training ramp-up, to be sure). And maybe he pulls together some solid starts for the Dodgers, who will likely have to manage a six-man rotation with Yamamoto's regimen as well as Shohei Ohtani coming back from injury to pitch again.
Or maybe we have to think of Snell like Tyler Glasnow: good for only one half of a season, and then falls off a cliff. As a friend of mine texted me, if we get Glasnow for the first half, and then Snell for the second half, it's like we have a full season of a real pitcher.
(cries)
