Welp.
When left-handed pitcher Blake Snell signed a pillow contract with a first-year opt-out with the San Francisco Giants last offseason, his hope was that he’d be able to cash out this offseason, and land the contract he had anticipated a year ago. And when he officially opted out a fe weeks ago, he maintained that optimism.
And he was right. On Tuesday, Snell signed the deal he and mega agent Scott Boras were searching for. And, just as you all feared, it’s with the Los Angeles Dodgers. ESPN’s Jeff Passan broke the news that Snell was signing with the Dodgers for five years and $182 million, physical pending.
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
The rich get richer, and they get richer because they spend more. The Giants never seemed particularly interested in re-signing Snell at any price, let alone the massive price tag he ultimately landed. Instead the free-spending Dodgers — who committed over a billion dollars last offseason, and are one of the five teams to have made serious offers for Juan Soto — patch the hole in their rotation that, while very large, still didn’t keep them from winning a World Series a month ago.
It doesn’t bode well for the Giants to play at the top of the pitching market, where Corbin Burnes and Max Fried still sit. Snell, who showed with the Giants that he can be the most dominant pitcher in baseball at times, but a negative value player at other times, set the market for an ace pretty darned high.
On the one hand, it’s a contract that looks like an overpay, and it’s easy to be happy the Giants aren’t the ones writing that check. On the other hand, it’s clearly not an overpay for the Dodgers who, unlike the Giants, seem uninterested in having any sort of spending limits. It’s hard to imagine Snell’s contract keeping Los Angeles from any other contracts, now or in the future.
Must be nice.