Before Game 1 of the World Series against the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman made his intentions clear.
The architect of MLB’s most imposing juggernaut wore a light blue, button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled up past his wrists. A 5 o’clock shadow dotted his sleepless face. In his left hand, a silver coffee tumbler amplified the aesthetic of a man determined to make his mark.
Asked by a member of the media to share his thoughts on “people who say these two teams are here just because they spend the most money,” Friedman was predictably unapologetic. He mentioned the “unique challenges that each market has” and insisted the dynamic isn’t something he thinks about often.
Instead, Friedman laid out the franchise’s master plan.
“My ultimate, kind of big-picture goal is that when we are done, that we’re able to look back and say that was the golden era of Dodger baseball, and that is an incredibly high bar to even say that,” he said. “That’s where my focus is.”
A week later, Friedman’s Dodgers were World Series champions for the first time in a full season since 1988. At some point in the jubilant aftermath, it surely crossed his mind that no MLB team has won back-to-back World Series since 1999-2000.
Less than a month after raising that golden trophy, Friedman signaled that his Dodgers are determined to end that streak.
Late Tuesday night, the reigning champs reportedly agreed to a five-year, $182 million deal with left-handed starter Blake Snell, a two-time Cy Young award winner who spent the 2024 season pitching for the rival San Francisco Giants. According to reports from The Athletic and the L.A. Times, Snell’s contract features deferred money and a $52 million signing bonus. The Dodgers have yet to officially confirm the deal, but the goateed hurler posted to Instagram a picture of himself in an L.A. uniform.
At his best, Snell is simply one of the best pitchers in the world. Since 2021, he has the third-highest strikeout rate in MLB, behind Braves hurler Spencer Strider and his new (and former) teammate Tyler Glasnow. Snell’s .195 batting average against is also the second-best mark in the league over that time (also behind Glasnow). Only Strider has conjured more swing-and-miss. That said, Snell’s walk rate — second-worst since 2021 — is an unavoidable pockmark and limits his ability to work deep into starts, but the overall track record is undeniable. There are few pitchers you’d rather have across six innings.
For Snell, who turns 32 next week, this contract was a long time coming. Drafted by the Tampa Bay Rays out of a Seattle high school in 2011, Snell debuted in 2016 and immediately established himself as one of the game’s most dominant, albeit walk-prone, starting pitchers. In 2018, he captured his first Cy Young award, earning him a $50 million contract extension through 2023. After the 2020 season, Tampa Bay dealt him to the San Diego Padres, and in 2023, Snell won his second Cy Young Award as he entered free agency for the first time.
It was a season that should have earned him a hefty contract on the open market. But that never materialized.
All winter and into the spring, Snell waited for a number that met his fancy. Spring training arrived. His contemporaries flocked to the warm weather comfort of Arizona and Florida to prepare themselves for the marathon of the season. Snell, unsigned, with nowhere to go, stayed up north at his home in Seattle. Another month passed. The asking price from Snell and his agent, Scott Boras, surely shrunk. Boras, who represented three other major free agents whose negotiations lingered into the spring, received an avalanche of criticism.
Then, on March 19, just one day before the Dodgers and Padres opened the regular season in South Korea, Snell signed a two-year pact with the San Francisco Giants. The contract paid the left-hander $31 million per season and included an opt-out after 2024. It gave Snell a hefty chunk of change and offered him the opportunity to retest the market a year later. But it was certainly not the lengthy, career-defining contract that Snell and Boras were gunning for.
Then things got worse, with the delayed start to Snell’s 2024 impacting his health and effectiveness. The southpaw made just six starts before July, bouncing on and off the injured list while pitching to an astronomical 9.51 ERA. He seemed destined to decline his opt-out and return to San Francisco for the second year of his deal.
Instead, he turned it on. From his return on July 9 until the end of the season, Snell scintillated. Across 13 starts, the left-hander pitched to a 1.33 ERA with 105 strikeouts in 74 ⅓ innings. On July 27, he struck out 15 Colorado Rockies in six innings. In his next start, Snell threw a no-hitter, the first of his career, against the Cincinnati Reds. That remarkable turnaround motivated him to exercise his opt-out at season’s end and test the open market once again.
This time, he wasn’t waiting around. Snell will sit down at his Thanksgiving table on Thursday with a whole lot more turkey to his name.
For Snell, Los Angeles is an obvious fit. The money is right. The team is outstanding. The weather is beautiful. The coaching staff has a reputation for helping players excel. Who wouldn’t want to play for the Dodgers? Maybe Chavez Ravine is an obvious fit for everyone.
And any team could have used Blake Snell. He’s capable of starting Game 1 or Game 2 of a postseason series for every single franchise in baseball. The Dodgers, who weathered an onslaught of pitching injuries during their triumphant World Series campaign, know the value of a quality starting pitcher all too well.
In L.A., Snell joins a staff stocked with superstars. Glasnow, Snell’s old rotation-mate in Tampa, was an All-Star in 2024 and a near lock to start Game 1 in October until an elbow ailment in August sent him to the IL. He’s set to be healthy come spring training. Yoshinobu Yamamoto, whose $325 million deal last offseason represented the biggest contract ever for a pitcher, struggled with injuries as a rookie but came through in October, tossing to a 1.72 ERA across his final three playoff starts. Then there’s two-way dynamo Shohei Ohtani, who famously didn’t pitch in 2024 as he recovered from elbow surgery. The NL MVP, who has a career 3.01 ERA with 608 strikeouts in 481 ⅔ innings, is expected to be a full go come Opening Day.
The Dodgers’ other starting pitching options include:
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Future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw, who is technically a free agent but expressed his intention to re-sign with the Dodgers for another season.
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Tony Gonsolin, who missed all of 2024 recovering from elbow surgery but posted the second-lowest ERA in baseball from 2020 to 2022 behind only Jacob deGrom (minimum 200 innings pitched).
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Bobby Miller, a 25-year-old former first-round pick and top prospect who looked set to star for the Dodgers after dazzling in 2023. He struggled mightily in 2024 but remains a promising starting pitching option for the future.
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Dustin May, who also missed 2024 due to injuries but looked like a breakout candidate in 2023, pitching to a 2.63 ERA across his first nine starts. He’s expected to be healthy for Opening Day.
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Ben Casparius, Los Angeles’ starter for Game 4 of the World Series. The 25-year-old worked in shorter bursts during the club’s postseason run but remains an enticing multi-inning option.
It is a comical embarrassment of riches, yes, but it’s also a mystery box of unknowns. Every pitcher on this list comes with enormous questions, either in health or effectiveness. Pitching is volatile, and the only way to combat that volatility, as the 2024 Dodgers showed, is by employing enough starters to overwhelm the inevitable attrition. Snell is just another piece of that plan.
It’s an obvious, effective strategy for the Dodgers, one made possible by (1) being outstanding at development and (2) spending gobs of money in free agency, something more teams should be doing.
In signing Snell, the Dodgers, a fully operational financial behemoth, are flexing their muscles. Snell, in joining the Dodgers, cashed in on a near-decade of dominance.
Both rich just got richer.
