It always made sense.
The Los Angeles Dodgers’ brass has been fascinated with Blake Snell since president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman spent one of the Tampa Bay Rays’ 10 first-round picks in the 2011 MLB Draft, and has sought to add him multiple times over the last few seasons as he toured the rest of the NL West. The Dodgers tried late to make a push for him last winter, with their splashy offseason already over the billion-dollar mark. They expressed interest in him over the trade deadline, even if prying him from the San Francisco Giants would have caused a conniption for fans of the historic rivals.
This time, they landed him. The Dodgers are in agreement with the two-time Cy Young winner on a five-year deal worth $182 million, league sources confirmed to The Athletic on Tuesday night. It includes “some” deferred money and does not have any opt-outs, a league source said.
Snell’s deal includes a $52 million signing bonus, a league source confirmed. The signing bonus essentially makes sure the present value of the deal is still high even with the deferrals — so while the average annual value is $36.4 million, the figure for the Dodgers’ competitive balance tax calculation is expected to be around $32 to $33 million.
The Dodgers were expected to be players in the pitching market from the outset this offseason. Their run to the World Series this past October came in spite of an expensive rotation that was whittled down by injury by the time the postseason rolled around. The return of Shohei Ohtani from a second major elbow ligament reconstruction added one option, but it also forces the Dodgers into having to run a six-man rotation in order to accommodate him and $325 million man Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s regular schedules.
The riches brought in off the field by the Japanese baseball and business market allowed the Dodgers to play in the deepest waters of free agency yet again, putting Los Angeles at the top of a pitching rich market headed by Snell, Corbin Burnes and Max Fried.
Blake Snell joins a rotation that also includes Tyler Glasnow, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and a returning Shohei Ohtani. (Jason Mowry / Getty Images)
Burnes would have fit the Dodgers well, as the 2021 NL Cy Young winner has emerged as one of the steadiest top-end starters in the sport. Ever since that Cy Young-winning campaign was panned for its low innings total for a winner, he’s logged at least 190 innings in each season since. Whatever gradual dip the 30-year-old has seen in top-end stuff or strikeout rate has been overruled by consistent production. By winter’s end Burnes — who like Snell is a Scott Boras client — could very well earn this offseason’s richest pitching contract.
Fried and the Dodgers also make sense. The left-hander famously grew up in the area, after all, Most importantly, though, he’s shown a knack for consistently elite production without elite swing-and-miss numbers for years in Atlanta. Much like the Dodgers’ brief pursuit of Aaron Nola last winter, perhaps he is a guy who could offer volume and who could benefit from the club’s pitching development. He, like Burnes, is also just 30 years old, a year younger than Snell, however, is perhaps more willing to command more years and total dollars.
Neither, however, seemingly fit the Dodgers like Snell. He fit the Dodgers better than the Boston Red Sox, the other team he met with early during his second go-around in free agency, as The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal first reported. The same for the Baltimore Orioles and New York Yankees, two other teams reportedly connected to Snell.
The Dodgers value what Snell excels in providing. The left-hander boasts some of the most dominant stuff of any starter in baseball — stuff that clearly didn’t look diminished a year ago, when all three of his off-speed offerings (curveball, changeup, slider) had swing-and-miss rates of more than 40 percent. All of that came with a fastball that still sits in the mid-90s. Valuing the top-end “band” of outcomes is what the Dodgers have long emphasized in acquiring pitching, be it their pursuit of Snell’s former teammate Tyler Glasnow last offseason, or their hopes of landing Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki whenever he is posted.
Snell offers the highest of highs that a starting pitcher has shown for portions of each of the last two seasons. Two years ago with the San Diego Padres, Snell got hit hard for six runs against the Red Sox to drop his record to 1-6 and raise his ERA to 5.40. Over his next 23 starts, he had a 1.20 ERA, going at least six innings in 17 of them, and ended his season with a Cy Young award. A year ago, he signed late with San Francisco and held a 9.51 ERA by the time he hit the injured list in June — only to have a 1.23 ERA in the 14 starts after his return, a stretch that included a no-hitter.
That is what the Dodgers are betting on, just as they did in giving the richest pitching contract ever to Yamamoto and in giving five years and $136.5 million to Glasnow, despite the right-hander having never made more than 20 starts in a season. In a rotation built around upside while acknowledging the serious questions surrounding Ohtani, Dustin May and Tony Gonsolin, each returning of whom are coming off major elbow surgeries, Snell gives Los Angeles another top-end option.
With Bobby Miller coming off a disastrous season and two-thirds of their World Series rotation still sitting on the open market in Jack Flaherty and Walker Buehler, Snell gives the Dodgers a splash. If it all breaks right, then the Dodgers have a stacked group lined up and healthy for October. If a glut of injuries wrecks the Dodgers’ best laid plans, they have another elite option thrown into the mix.
And with work to do this winter — the Dodgers’ focus still lies in the corner outfield and a potential reunion with Teoscar Hernández to go with re-upping some of their title-winning roster (such as Kiké Hernández, Buehler, Flaherty and Blake Treinen) — it’s a giant box checked before Thanksgiving.
(Photo: John Hefti / USA Today)
