Blake Snell Is the Perfect Fit for the Dodgers
There is no doubt that Snell is a great fit for a Dodgers team looking to stay on top in 2025.
The first top-tier free agent of the 2024-25 MLB offseason is off the board, as the Los Angeles Dodgers are adding Blake Snell to their starting rotation.
The soon-to-be 32-year-old lefty agreed to a five-year, $182 million deal with the reigning World Series champions on Tuesday night, as per ESPN’s Jeff Passan and Jorge Castillo.
Snell finally gets his big payday after signing a short-term deal with a series of opt-outs with the San Francisco Giants last offseason.
In his lone season in the Bay Area, Snell positioned himself well for another run at free agency by turning in an excellent campaign.
In 104.0 innings pitched across 20 starts, the southpaw threw to the tune of a 3.12 ERA, a 1.05 WHIP and career-best totals in both average against (.174) and strikeout rate (34.7%).
While signing a nine-figure deal with the reigning champs makes complete sense for Snell, it might seem confusing, at least on the surface, why the Dodgers focused their efforts on their rotation, given the star-studded group they were projected to have even before the deal.
| Pitcher | Handedness |
|---|---|
| Yoshinobu Yamamoto | Right |
| Shohei Ohtani | Right |
| Blake Snell | Left |
| Tyler Glasnow | Right |
| Dustin May | Right |
| Tony Gonsolin | Right |
| Bobby Miller | Right |
But after stopping to really consider what this signing brings the Dodgers, other than one of the league’s best arms and a two-time Cy Young Award winner, it’s clear that Snell is the perfect fit for a Dodgers team that is looking to stay on top in 2025.
Snell Addresses Dodgers’ Starting Pitching Injury Woes
The Dodgers’ rotation had some of the worst injury luck of any team this past season.
They started the year knowing Ohtani, Gonsolin, and possibly May would all be on the shelf for the season. They also had a few arms who they knew wouldn’t debut until mid-way through the 2024 campaign, Clayton Kershaw and Walker Buehler, with both pitchers hitting the IL a second time before the season was over.
Throughout the year, the Dodgers also dealt with injuries to the likes of Yamamoto, Glasnow and Gavin Stone, among others.
Because their rotation was never at full strength due to all the different arms hitting the IL, L.A.’s rotation did not post the same dominant numbers we saw from the offense and the bullpen.
The Dodgers’ starting staff ranked 19th in ERA, tied for 18th in WHIP and tied for 12th in AVG against in 2024.
Snell is a huge asset for a team that dealt with that situation.
He’s made at least 20 starts and thrown over 100 innings in seven of his nine career seasons. The only years he didn’t reach either of those marks were his rookie campaign, in which he didn’t open the season in the majors, and the COVID-shortened 2020 season, in which he was well on track to surpass those thresholds if it were a regular 162-game season.
If the Dodgers end up facing similar injury woes in 2025, Snell’s durability will not only see them through the turbulent times but could help the rotation improve upon some of those lackluster stats from 2024.
Meanwhile, if the Dodgers have a relatively healthy season, Snell will be able to ease the workload for arms like Ohtani, May and Gonsolin as they return from Tommy John procedures, as well as protect an oft-injured Glasnow and a young core piece like Yamamoto, all while turning this into arguably the best rotation in all of baseball.
Snell Is One of the Premier Lefties in MLB
The other reason this is a great fit is that the Dodgers now have a bit of lefty variance in a rotation that was slated to be entirely right-handed before he signed.
The Dodgers will have a premier southpaw to help them hold back opposing left-handed hitters, which Snell did superbly in 2024, holding lefty batters to a .105/.239/.228 slash line and .222 wOBA.
But ultimately, the side of the plate his opponent was standing on hardly mattered. Snell was dominant in his approach against everyone standing 60 feet and six inches away. His 98th-percentile strikeout rate of 34.7% ranked second among all starters with at least 50 innings pitched, trailing only Garrett Crochet of the Chicago White Sox.
That would immediately make him the top swing-and-miss guy in this rotation, adding to Glasnow’s fourth-ranked 32.2% clip and Yamamoto’s 11th-ranked 28.5% rate in 2024. And back in 2023, Ohtani posted a fifth-best 31.5% K-rate, giving L.A. four top-tier strikeout specialists at the top of the rotation.
Snell also fell in the 98th percentile in whiff rate and the 81st percentile in chase rate in 2024.
From a batted ball perspective, even when hitters were making contact, he induced a 92nd-percentile average exit velocity of 86.5 mph, a 99th-percentile hard-hit rate of 28.9% and an 82nd-percentile barrel rate of 5.7%.
The fact he can light the league up from a different side of the mound than any other Dodgers starter adds a new wrinkle that any opposing team must gameplan for when facing the defending champions.
The Dodgers Are Now That Much Deadlier for 2025
The Dodgers came into this offseason in a good place, despite some of the key pieces from their World Series run like Buehler, Jack Flaherty, Blake Treinen and Teoscar Hernández hitting free agency.
They still had an All-Star-filled starting rotation with immense talent in the bullpen, all of which was supported by a lineup led by a trio of MVPs in Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman.
And now that they’ve shelled out even more money and added yet another front-line starter, the Dodgers are positioning themselves to be a heavy favorite to repeat next season.
They’ve proven that they’re willing to spend whatever it takes to upgrade this team and not allow the competition to catch up to their style of play.
Still, there is work to be done and there are decisions to be made before the offseason is up. Now the question becomes, what move do they make next?
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