Baseball, more than any other sport, has classes of teams.
There are big-market squads with limitless spending power, who can simply buy the best players in the game once they become available. Then, there's everyone else.
Late on Tuesday night, the preeminent big-market team proved just how deep its pockets go by signing two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell to a five-year, $182 million contract.
Left-hander Blake Snell and the Los Angeles Dodgers are in agreement on a five-year, $182 million contract, pending physical, sources tell me and @jorgecastillo. The World Series champions get the two-time Cy Young winner in the first nine-figure deal of the winter.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) November 27, 2024
Dodgers rotation is loaded with talent and injury concerns
The Dodgers, who just won the World Series despite only having three healthy starting pitchers throughout the postseason, are putting together a juggernaut rotation. Jack Flaherty and Walker Buehler, who played instrumental roles in the team's championship triumph, will likely depart in free agency, but the rest of the rotation is stacked.
Snell joins Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow, Shohei Ohtani, Tony Gonsolin, Dustin May, and likely Clayton Kershaw in a rotation that is brimming with both talent and serious availability concerns. Of that group, only Glasnow pitched more than 125 innings in 2024, and Ohtani, Gonsolin, and May didn't pitch at all this past season while recovering from Tommy John (Ohtani, Gonsolin) or esophegeal surgery (May).
Those injury concerns are real, and they'll persist even after signing Snell, who has only exceeded 130 innings pitched in a single season twice in his career—2018 and 2023, which just so happened to be his two Cy Young years.
In addition to the one year he played with the San Francisco Giants, Snell has now earned himself $214 million over six years total in his forays into free agency.
Snell’s career has been up-and-down to this point, with absurd highs (one of only seven pitchers to have won a Cy Young in both leagues), and middling lows (4.06 ERA in 285 ⅔ innings between 2019-21). However, he’s found the next gear over the past three seasons, with a 2.82 ERA (2.98 FIP) in 412.0 innings between the San Diego Padres and Giants.
It's unclear if this will be the big move for the Dodgers this offseason, or if they'll compound the Snell signing with an even bigger move (for Juan Soto?), like they did last offseason when signing Yamamoto and Ohtani to deals that exceeded $1 billion in total value. It's possible that they could acquire another ace while keeping their payroll in check by winning the Roki Sasaki sweepstakes.
Other teams that were in the market for an ace are now going to be left scrambling for the remaining high-end starters, including Sasaki, Corbin Burnes, and Max Fried. The Red Sox, in particular, appear to be on the cusp of signing someone.
Red Sox were in on both Snell and Kikuchi before losing out. They seek rotation upgrades and have preferred a lefty.
— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) November 27, 2024
Regardless of the fallout of this deal on the larger MLB landscape, this was simply just a case of the rich getting richer. The Dodgers were already the best team in baseball, were expecting to get over half of their rotation back on the mound in 2025, and are still in contention for most of the top free agents in the league. Signing Snell won't preclude them from other moves, but it sure as heck makes them the team to beat—both on the field and on the hot stove.