By Andrew Baggarly, Fabian Ardaya and Ken Rosenthal
So much didn’t go to plan for Blake Snell last season with the San Francisco Giants.
Coming off an NL Cy Young Award, the market he anticipated didn’t develop. He signed a prove-it contract just two weeks before Opening Day. He injured his groin twice. When he was healthy enough to get on the mound, making just six starts through the end of June, he clearly wasn’t himself. He had a 9.51 ERA in those outings, having never survived past the fifth inning.
None of it mattered. Clearly, the industry knows what Snell can do when he’s right. That’s what the left-hander was counting on when he opted out of a $30 million contract with the Giants for 2025. And he was rewarded on Tuesday when he signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers, a development he announced on Instagram. Snell signed a five-year, $182 million contract with “some” deferred money, The Athletic’s Fabian Ardaya confirmed.
The last impression that Snell left on the mound was a lasting one. The two-time Cy Young Award winner rescued his free agency in the second half while piecing together the finest three-month stretch of his career. He posted a 1.23 ERA over his final 14 starts, holding batters to a ridiculous .123 average. His no-hitter on Aug. 2 at Cincinnati — his first and only complete game in 211 career starts — challenged the narrative of a self-limiting pitcher who competes only on his terms.
“They can’t say it anymore,” Snell said after striking out 11 and throwing 114 pitches, which was three away from matching his career high. “Complete game. Shutout. No-hitter. Leave me alone.”
Snell, who will be 32 on Opening Day, is one of seven pitchers in major league history to win a Cy Young Award in both leagues. Both times he won the award, his strikeouts and rate stats were sufficiently eye-popping to boost his candidacy over pitchers who achieved more volume. Snell captured the NL prize with the San Diego Padres in 2023 when he went 14-9 with a league-best 2.25 ERA, struck out 234 in 180 innings, and held batters to a league-low 5.8 hits per nine innings. He edged out Justin Verlander to earn his first Cy Young Award in the AL with the Tampa Bay Rays in 2018, a breakout season in which he led the major leagues with a 1.89 ERA that ranked as the lowest in the AL since Pedro Martinez’s historic 2000 season.
When healthy, Snell, The Athletic’s No. 5 ranked free agent this winter, is quite simply the least hittable starting pitcher in the major leagues. According to Baseball Savant, he ranked in the 99th percentile in hard-hit percentage, the 98th percentile in whiff percentage and the 98th percentile in strikeout percentage last season, even after getting off to a disastrous start. Snell also reduced his walk rate from 5.0 to 3.8 per nine innings. Although his hard and biting curveball has been his most effective pitch, Snell posted a positive run value with all four of his offerings. His slider and changeup were just as lethal during his 14-start run. And his fastball, which averaged 96 mph and touched 99, is a unicorn with its ability to stay on plane from a lower arm slot.
Snell will never be considered a workhorse — in 2018, he became the first starting pitcher to win the Cy Young Award to throw fewer than 200 innings — and the no-hitter aside, he is not the kind of rotation frontman who will put the team on his shoulders. But he is both a product of and an ideal fit for the era in which he is competing. More than ever, teams are optimizing their pitching usage while asking starting pitchers for higher quality at a reduced quantity.
What Snell offers to a team is more valuable than ever. And he knew it.
As did the Dodgers, the World Series champions who are now getting even better.
Snell clearly was intent on resolving his free agency quicker than he did last season.
The addition of Snell would fortify an already powerful Dodgers rotation that next season is expected to include Shohei Ohtani coming off major elbow surgery. Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow will be at the forefront of the group. Clayton Kershaw also is expected back after undergoing surgery on his left toe, as are two other pitchers returning from arm operations, Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May. The team has also been linked to Japanese pitcher Roki Sasaki, who is soon to be posted by his Nippon Professional Baseball team.
Snell has never pitched more than 180 2/3 innings in a season. The Dodgers do not figure to ask any of their starters to be workhorses. Rather, they will take the same approach they did in 2024, proceeding cautiously with their starters and trying to ensure their top arms are ready for the postseason.
By signing with the Dodgers, Snell — a Seattle-area native — would get to stay on the West Coast. He is familiar with Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, who was running the Rays when Tampa Bay drafted him 52nd overall in 2011.
The Dodgers made a late run at Snell before he signed with the Giants last spring and also showed interest in him at the trade deadline. He evidently was more intriguing to them now than he was a year ago, when his expectations were higher and draft-pick compensation was part of the equation. Snell, because he received a qualifying offer from the San Diego Padres last offseason, was not eligible for another.
(Photo: Brandon Sloter / Image Of Sport / Getty Images)
