Last Tuesday, Blake Snell self-reported that he had agreed to a contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers by posting a picture of himself in a Dodger uniform on his Instagram account.
Jeff Passan and Jorge Castillo of ESPN then confirmed the report and included dollar figures, stating that the deal is for five years and $182 million. The move bolsters a Dodgers pitching rotation that was held together with baling wire and glue through two rounds of playoffs and the World Series. The Dodgers actually employed a bullpen game in Game 4 of the Fall Classic and were potentially prepared to do it again in Game 6.
As Daniel Epstein reported here at Forbes.com, as of now, the Dodgers 2025 rotation will consist of Snell, Snell’s former Rays teammate Tyler Glasnow, Shohei Ohtani, who should be good to go early in the season after recovering from (some sort of) elbow surgery, Japanese sensation Yoshinobu Yamamoto, stalwart Clayton Kershaw (coming off two surgeries), potentially another Japanese sensation Rōki Sasaki (if the rumors are to be believed), maybe Dustin May (recovering from an esophageal tear), and any mixture of Tony Gonsolin, Michael Grove, Ben Casparius, and Bobby Miller. The signing of Snell, however, probably forecloses World Series hero Walker Buehler from returning to the club as a free agent.
As has been widely covered, Snell’s 2023-24 free agency didn’t go as planned. Early reports were that Snell and his agent, Scott Boras, were looking for a long-term deal in the neighborhood of $270 million, which would have outpaced the seven-year, $245 million deal Boras negotiated for Stephen Strasburg in 2019, but which would have paled in comparison to the nine-year, $324 million deal he got for Gerrit Cole in 2020. When asked about those lofty expectations during this year’s playoffs, Boras scoffed and told me that he never had his (or Snell’s) sights set that high.
In the end, just prior to the end of spring training last season, Snell signed a two-year, $62 million contract with the San Francisco Giants that included an opt-out after year one. Snell took home $32 million ($17 million signing bonus + $15 million in salary) and walked away from the remaining $30 million. The exact financial terms of the new deal with the Dodgers are not yet official, but a league source states that there is a $52 million signing bonus, which offsets what Jon Heyman has reported is a $65 million deferral. Accordingly, the deal is worth roughly $170 million in present-day value, meaning the hit to the Dodgers is only about $32.4 million per year for competitive balance tax purposes.
