The Los Angeles Dodgers have agreed to sign left-handed starter Blake Snell to a five-year, $182 million deal. Given that the Dodgers are the World Series champions with a ton of talent and monstrous payroll, the first big-splash move of the offseason sending a two-time Cy Young winner to Los Angeles on a nine-figure deal is bound to turn some heads. Let’s examine the fallout.
Snell’s outlook
Let’s be clear about this: When Blake Snell is on, he’s amazing. He’ll throw like the best pitcher in baseball for stretches. Sometimes the stretches are very long. After all, he does have the two Cy Youngs. Few players have a 6+ WAR season on their dossiers; Snell has a 6.2 and a 7.1.
But …
Do you know what his third-highest WAR is in his nine-year career? It’s 2.2.
He worked 180 ⅔ innings in his first Cy Young season (2018) and 180 in his second (2023). His next-highest total is 129 ⅓. Even if you wanted to throw out his rookie year, when he didn’t debut until April 23, and 2020, it’s still worth pointing out Snell has only been an All-Star once in the seven remaining seasons.
Last year was a pretty good illustration of the full Blake Snell experience. He had a 9.51 ERA through six starts before being placed on the injured list due to a groin injury. He missed about five weeks. After his return, he was amazing. He started 14 games the rest of the way for the Giants, going 5-0 (the team went 12-2 in his starts) with a 1.23 ERA, 0.78 WHIP and 114 strikeouts in 80 ⅓ innings. He allowed only 33 hits and two home runs, good for an opposing batting average of .123 and slugging percentage of .171. It was just an insane run of pitching dominance.
Snell will be 32 years old next season and working with a team that gets the most out of its starting pitchers while they are on a mound. Remember, he didn’t sign until March 19 last spring, so one could make the argument that his awful beginning and then injury were a direct result of not having a full spring training. He’ll have plenty of time this year to be ready to go for the start of the season.
Basically, a third Cy Young-level season is a decent bet. It’s just that we’ve only seen two full years of that caliber out of nine.
Dodgers immense rotation upside
It isn’t just Snell with Cy Young upside in the Dodgers’ rotation.
Tyler Glasnow looks like an ace in stretches when he’s on the mound, too. He’s just never done it in a full season like Snell did twice. The closest Glasnow came was last season, when he worked a career-high 134 innings. He pitched to a 3.49 ERA (111 ERA+) and 0.95 WHIP with 168 strikeouts against 35 walks. He made the All-Star team for the first time.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto has ace upside, too. A shoulder injury held him to just 18 regular-season starts, but he added four in the playoffs, including a dominant World Series Game 2 start. To give an idea of Yamamoto’s capability, his 13 starts between his awful debut and injury resulted in a 2.34 ERA, 1.01 WHIP and 82 strikeouts in 73 innings.
Shohei Ohtani is coming back from elbow surgery, too, and should be in plenty good shape, given that the procedure was in September 2023. In Ohtani’s three rotation years with the Angels, he had a 2.84 ERA and 1.05 WHIP with 542 strikeouts in 428 ⅓ innings. That’s a frontline starter. In fact, he finished fourth in AL Cy Young voting in 2022 when he was 15-9 with a 2.33 ERA and 219 strikeouts.
That’s four aces, right?
The Dodgers also have Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May coming off major surgeries that cost them the 2024 season. May has shown flashes of ace upside and has a 3.10 career ERA. Gonsolin was 16-1 with a 2.14 ERA in 2022.
They might not even be done adding, as Roki Sasaki remains on the market and the Dodgers remain interested.
Why? Well, about that …
Plenty of injury concern
We already discussed Snell. He worked just 104 innings last year and heads to his age-32 season as a spindly lefty with a pretty decent history of getting injured. He’s only hit 130 innings twice out of nine years in the majors.
Glasnow has only hit 130 innings once and that was 134 last year. He was hurt for the playoffs.
Yamamoto, even if we looped in the playoffs, went 108 ⅔ innings last year.
Ohtani is a full-time DH with a career high of 166 innings on the mound and is coming off major surgery.
Gonsolin’s career high in innings is 130 ⅓. May’s is 56. Both are coming off major surgery.
Even if the Dodgers signed Sasaki, the adjustment to MLB is always a question, and he was injured last season as well. Clayton Kershaw, whose return seems inevitable, is full of question marks.
The Dodgers have plenty of history with pitcher injuries, too. It isn’t just Yamamoto and Glasnow last year or May and Gonsolin. There’s Kershaw’s recent history. Walker Buehler returned from Tommy John surgery last year. Kyle Hurt, River Ryan and Emmet Sheehan are recovering from Tommy John surgery right now while Gavin Stone is rehabbing from shoulder surgery. So is reliever Brusdar Graterol. Bobby Miller seems to have been derailed by injury last season.
Whether you believe the organization is causing pitcher injuries or worse at preventing them than other teams or it’s just a coincidence, it can’t be denied that Dodgers pitchers keep getting hurt.
Not that is cost them much last season. The Dodgers’ rotation was a mess of injury. Stone was the team leader with 140 ⅓ innings in the regular season. Glasnow was second, again, at 134. Remarkably, Yamamoto was third on the team in innings pitched with 90. James Paxton was fourth! Stone and Glasnow were hurt for the playoffs while Paxton had long since been cut.
The Dodgers still won 98 games with the best record in baseball and took the World Series.
Perhaps 2025 will be more of the same.
The Dodgers’ rotation is absolutely bursting with ace-level talent and question marks.
