UTK Flash 11/27/24
Snell to Dodgers
There’s not much to say on Blake Snell when it comes to health, so I almost didn’t write anything here. However, so much of last season’s odd shape for Snell was put on two things - his late signing and his early leg injuries - that I feel there’s enough here to address. Underlying both of these is a paternalism baseball is still trying to enforce, despite being deep in a cultural and value shift inside the game.
Snell had full access to great facilities - multiple - and a source tells me that he didn’t take full advantage of it, instead often working out from home, but even then, the hamstring and groin strains weren’t a direct result. Instead, Snell was “the wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time” as the Giants internal culture struggled and then flipped, with Buster Posey coming in and shoving the analytics staff down the hall and much closer to the exit door.
Behind the scenes, the first-half issues that Snell had all but locked in the fate of Farhan Zaidi. It was an “analytics signing” and Snell was never going to be the kind of workhorse starter that Special Assistant Posey convinced ownership the team needed. Now as GM, we’ll see how quickly he realizes those don’t exist in the game anymore and the few that do are exceptionally expensive.
Snell shifts to the Dodgers, who are either exceptionally thin or exceptionally deep, depending on how you look at it. Clayton Kershaw is barely even on the depth chart, but the team is relying on comebacks from Tyler Glasnow (sprained elbow), Shohei Ohtani (sprained elbow), Tony Gonsolin (sprained elbow), and Dustin May (sprained elbow). See a pattern? They’ll be without River Ryan (sprained elbow) all year and Emmett Sheehan (sprained elbow) until at least the ASB. If all of those come back as planned, plus Gavin Stone, there will be an absolute embarrassment of riches and the Dodgers could go with a ten man rotation if they felt like it. The likelihood is they’ll get five at a time.
Snell’s never had a major arm injury and despite his lack of bulk and bulk innings, plus his high effort delivery, his lack of endurance has never gotten him into significant injury issues. He’s not efficient, loses his command frequently, and can overstride, which ends up causing groin issues frequently. Working with one of the better pitching coaches in the game and near-unlimited resources should help.
The Dodgers may have sold off their analytics group, but they’re still one of the smartest around. (Oh yes, they got more than enough from that sale to pay for this deal and more.) They’ll take the pitcher that analytics loves, doesn’t go deep into games, and weaken a division foe in the same bold move. The injury risk barely registers on this staff. Snell could end up anywhere between the P1 and the P4 on this team, though he’s unlikely to go over 150 innings this season.
As for the spending, the Dodgers aren’t done. In the same week that Todd Walter put big money into a new Formula 1 team, he’s not done spending on the Dodgers either. There’s deferred money in this deal, but an upfront bonus that shows they’re not scared of tax thresholds or short of cash either. Snell’s signing doesn’t put them out on Roki Sasaki one bit, nor on Juan Soto, to whom the Dodgers made a “very credible offer,” per the source.