Blake Snell, the reigning National League Cy Young Award winner, has agreed to a two-year, $62 million deal with the San Francisco Giants, a team source confirmed Monday. The deal includes an opt-out.
For Snell, the contract represents the end of a lengthy free agency saga that has lingered deep into spring training. For the Giants, the addition of Snell represents a needed infusion of talent in a division that only got more treacherous in the face of a spending spree by the rival Los Angeles Dodgers.
Snell, who was No. 5 on The Athletic’s free agent Big Board, authored a remarkable walk year in 2023 with the Padres. He led the majors in ERA (2.25) and in hits allowed per nine innings (5.8). Despite pitching just 180 innings, Snell won his second Cy Young award. But that hardly tells the whole story. In late May, nine starts into his season, Snell was 1-6 with a 5.40 ERA. Then he went on a tear and never slowed, going 13-3 with a 1.20 ERA — and a bananas .156/.273/.217 opposing slash line — over his remaining 23 starts of the season.
Snell, 31, has been one of the best left-handed starters in baseball over the past eight seasons. He’s one of seven pitchers in MLB history with a Cy Young in both leagues. He has a 3.20 career ERA, two ERA titles and a 3.33 postseason ERA. His Statcast page is a constellation of red dots (and a conspicuously blue one we’ll get to shortly). “Snellzilla” is a monster wielding trophies and a filthy four-pitch mix. No active left-hander, minimum 30 starts, has averaged more strikeouts per nine innings than Snell’s 11.1. And the only active lefty, minimum 30 starts, with a lower career batting average against than Snell (.214) is Clayton Kershaw (.209).
Snell’s nastiness is not in doubt.
But over this offseason front offices have been forced to wrestle with their appraisals of how Snell’s skillset will age over the course of his next contract. The knocks against him are obvious and enduring. Back to that one blue dot on Statcast: Snell was in the fourth percentile in the majors in walk rate. He led the majors in walks in 2023, becoming the first Cy Young winner to top that category since Early Wynn in 1959, and so despite the league-leading opponent batting average Snell’s starts featured a fairly typical amount of traffic on the bases (1.19 WHIP). Due mostly to high pitch counts, Snell has averaged 5 1/3 innings per start in his career. Because of various injuries, he also has only surpassed the 30-start mark twice: his Cy Young seasons.
Considering all that context — from the command and workload concerns to the downright dominance — the Snell signing represents one of the most compelling risk/reward calculations in recent memory for a starting pitcher. The Athletic’s Tim Britton predicted at the outset of the offseason that Snell would sign a five-year, $135 million deal. Agent Scott Boras waited out the market, watching top starters Shohei Ohtani (No. 1 on the Big Board), Aaron Nola (No. 2), Yoshinobu Yamamoto (No. 3), Sonny Gray (No. 7) and Eduardo Rodríguez (No. 9) sign before either Snell (No. 5) or Jordan Montgomery (No. 6), both Boras clients, came off the board.
Snell won his first Cy Young award with the Tampa Bay Rays. (Matt Marton / USA TODAY)
Snell’s heater still hums along at 95 mph, but the pitch primarily responsible for his rediscovery of ace form in 2023 was his curveball. The curve had been his most-used secondary back in 2018 but had since taken a backseat to the slider. Snell threw 627 curves last season; 13 resulted in hits, and 109 were strike threes. That’s an enviable ratio. Statcast charted the pitch as one of the most valuable in baseball last season, with a plus-22 Run Value.
Early last season, Snell started leaning on the curve and changeup against right-handed hitters, leaving the slider for lefties, and the more success he saw the more he leaned into it. In September, Snell’s secondary usage against right-handed hitters was 25 percent curve, 24 percent changeups, and 5 percent sliders.
The result?
In 2022, righties batted .213/.288/.346 against Snell.
In 2023, they batted .176/.284/.281 against him.
That first line is bad. The second is abysmal.
Snell’s pure stuff is as good as anybody’s in the game. What remains to be seen is how it holds up in the back half of his career.
(Top photo: Orlando Ramirez / USA TODAY)
