Oh no, his life is totally fine. The optics on his career, though? Less than.
The San Francisco Giants waited out Blake Snell and his agent Scott Boras until the cost to sign the 2023 NL Cy Young avoided a Barry Zito/Johnny Cueto situation where they paid a pitcher a lot of money for a long time and mainly got the pitcher’s decline. Snell and Boras took as a consolation prize a high AAV, with the downside risk of Snell getting off to a slow or bad start. We’re witnessing that downside right now and it looks like the Giants are setup to get zero upside in 2024. Is this really a lost season for Snell?
Scott Boras was mainly interested in setting new average annual value records for his major clients this offseason. Snell’s $31 million AAV winds up as 6th all-time for a pitcher (if you toss out Shohei Ohtani’s situation). It’s also the highest for a left-handed pitcher. Despite the financial victory, Snell has followed up a Cy Young season with a massive flop.
It’s not all bad, of course. He’s about to welcome his first child into the world. He’s guaranteed $62 million, and if he winds up having a stellar second half of the season and a successful playoff run, he’ll opt out and get more money. The opt out isn’t implausible, either, and as Barry Zito’s career demonstrates, it really only takes one postseason to cleanse the palette perception-wise. Snell just needs to show that he can return to that Cy Young form and sustain it for a stretch. He still has the chance to turn things around, but can he? And what would a turnaround really look like?
Let’s map last year’s outcomes onto what’s left of this season. First, we’ll assume that since he’s had to stop and restart his Spring Training — first the hamstring injury, then paternity leave — that he has one more “just getting work in” Spring Training-esque turd in him. Then, if the pattern holds — for his career, he has a combined April/May/June ERA of 4.33 — at least five bad regular season starts to ease him back into a regular rhythm.
For the sake of argument, let’s say his next start goes exactly as his last start:
4 IP 4 ER 2 BB 7 K 1 HRA
Then we’ll map his first five regular season starts from last season onto his next five:
23 IP 14 ER 18 BB 26 K (5.48 ERA / 6.17 FIP)
That would give him a line of 27 IP 18 ER 20 BB 33 K 6 HRA.
Added to his current season line of 19 IP 22 ER 11 BB 24 K (10.42 ERA / 4.55 FIP) 3 HRA, and that gives us 46 IP 40 ER 31 BB 57 K 9 HRA, which equates to a 7.83 ERA and 5.28 FIP. While not good, he was in a similar spot after the first month last season when he won the Cy Young (5.48 ERA / 6.17 FIP). He wouldn’t have an ERA/FIP split under 4.00 until June 28th, a full three months (and 16 starts) into the season.
Now, since the Giants assume that after a long enough in-season Spring Training and history-proven adjustment period he’ll snap back to doing what he did last season, let’s apply the inelegant 1:1 mapping scheme to the rest of his season. First, let’s be optimistic and say he has 14 regular season starts remaining after the 11 (5 actual plus 6 projected) mentioned above. Then, we’ll map the 14 starts from last season following his rough April.
80 IP
17 runs (17 earned)
113 K
34 BB
6 HRA
2 HBP
1.91 ERA (2.76 FIP)
1.04 WHIP
Oh wait. For this exercise, we can’t do that. We have to think how he and the Giants are thinking: he’ll end as strong as he did last season, so let’s take his final 14 starts instead —
82 IP
15 runs (14 earned)
102 K
50 BB
4 HRA
1 HBP
1.54 ERA (3.27 FIP)
1.15 WHIP
Combine this with that projected season line after his next six starts — 46 IP 40 ER 31 BB 57 K 9 HRA — and you wind up with this:
128 IP
55 ER
159 K
81 BB
13 HRA
3 HBP
3.87 ERA (3.94 FIP)
That’d be the typical innings workload for Snell with an atypical ERA/FIP split, lower K/9 and a BB/9 (5.7) that’s obscenely high — but the total line is not reprehensible. It’d be far short of expectations, of course, and we’d wonder who the real winners in that case were. I guess it’d only be Scott Boras, really. Snell would presumably opt in for 2025 and try to prove that he’s not a power lefty in decline.
Every starting pitcher has five bad starts a year. The obvious lesson in that common wisdom is that it’s unwise to write off a player based on a 5-game sample. Nothing in the Statcast pitch tracking indicates a decline in stuff, so it’s down to timing and comfort, a pair of conditions that tend to improve with time. The longer Blake Snell plays, the better he’s likely to pitch. Just how much better is the question, and given Snell’s track record, it’s possible the Giants will be paying him for last year’s award instead of their preseason projection.
The only other time Blake Snell has pitched anywhere close to his 2023 Cy Young self is 2018, the other time he won the Cy Young. In between those wins, he’s a 3.85 ERA / 3.44 FIP guy with 12 K/9 and 4 BB/9 in about 128 innings. To put this all another way: Blake Snell will have to pitch like his Cy Young self just to get back to approximately his career averages in between his two Cy Youngs. Of course, the odds of exactly this happening are pretty slim.
On the other hand, hype plus expectations plus a significant life event is enough to keep any human being from getting comfortable, especially if we’re talking about a 4-5 month window. In the grand scheme of things, that’s not a lot of time in a person’s life. A season lost to personal changes rather than injuries shouldn’t mean anything to Snell. That’s not for lack of effort on his part — I hope it’s been clear that I’m not casting aspersions.
It may turn out fine for both Snell and the Giants — maybe he pitches them into the NLDS? — but, if a great performance doesn’t materialize this season, oh well. It’d be an unfortunate break for the team, but not an unforeseeable outcome given Snell’s in-between Cy Youngs career, Boras Corp.’s willingness to miss Spring Training, and the team’s decision not to insist that he get more prep time before joining the team.
Blake Snell will be fine no matter what, but the Giants might’ve lost a year of his career.