Blake Snell is not messing around. Scott Boras is not messing around. The Los Angeles Dodgers are not messing around.
As Thanksgiving nears, it’s comforting to know that the Los Angeles Angels are not the only team signing free agents. The five-year, $182 million, agreement Snell reached with the Dodgers on Tuesday night stands as the first truly big move of the offseason. The deal is pending a physical, and once official, its impact will reverberate throughout the sport.
Let’s start with the World Series champion Dodgers, because everything in baseball these days, it seems, starts with the Dodgers. Their 2025 rotation figures to include some combination of Snell, Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow, Dustin May and Tony Gonsolin, as well as a free agent they are all but certain to sign, Clayton Kershaw, and another free agent for whom they are considered the front-runner, Roki Sasaki.
None of those pitchers is remotely close to a workhorse. But between Snell, the pitchers returning from injuries and possibly Kershaw and Sasaki, the Dodgers are bringing in almost an entirely new set of starters while subtracting only Walker Buehler and Jack Flaherty. Of course, the way the Dodgers burn through pitchers, they still might be caught short in October.
Ohtani, May and Gonsolin are coming off major elbow surgeries. Kershaw is coming off left-toe and left-knee surgery and a season in which he made only seven starts. Yamamoto missed nearly three months with a strained right rotator cuff. Glasnow did not pitch after Aug. 11 due to elbow tendinitis. And Sasaki, if the Dodgers sign him, will be handled with care; he is only 23, and his career high in innings in Japan is 129 1/3.
The addition of a pitcher like Snell, then, was practically a necessity. And while the Dodgers will remain in the mix for free-agent outfielder Juan Soto, if only to jack up the price for the other bidders, signing him was a longshot from the start. The return of Teoscar Hernández looms as a more realistic possibility. After that, the Dodgers can bring back Kiké Hernández, upgrade the bullpen and call it a day.
Snell has never pitched more than 180 2/3 innings in a season. But by agreeing to terms so quickly, he, at least, will give himself a better chance to succeed than he did last offseason when he did not finalize his deal with the San Francisco Giants until March 19. This time, according to a source briefed on his discussions, Snell’s intention was, “to sign as early as possible.”
Smart move. Snell’s abbreviated spring training disrupted him early in the 2024 season, and he made two trips to the injured list. But after he again got hot in the second half, producing a 1.23 ERA in his last 14 starts, he opted out of his two-year, $62 million contract with the Giants. Now, he will effectively wind up with the kind of deal he wanted all along.
Add Snell’s $32 million salary last season to his Dodgers guarantee, and he’s looking at $214 million over six years, though a chunk of the new money is deferred. His $36.4 million average salary with the Dodgers would be the fifth-highest for a non-Ohtani pitcher, just ahead of Gerrit Cole’s. And while Snell talked with the Boston Red Sox, Baltimore Orioles and other clubs, he’s a Seattle area native. He preferred to stay on the West Coast.
So Snell wins, and to this point in the offseason, his agent, Boras, is winning, too. The Boras Four last winter consisted of Snell and three other free agents who signed on Feb. 25 or later, accepting shorter contracts with high average salaries. Two of the four, Snell and third baseman Matt Chapman, since have negotiated better deals. Chapman agreed in early September to a six-year, $151 million extension with the Giants, bringing his total payout in the two agreements to seven years, $171 million.
A third member of the Boras Four, Cody Bellinger, exercised his $27.5 million player option with the Chicago Cubs and will either stay with the team on a $25 million player option or receive a $5 million buyout in 2026. The fourth, left-hander Jordan Montgomery, left Boras for the Wasserman agency and exercised his player option with the Arizona Diamondbacks for $22.5 million.
Boras attributed the delays in his signings last offseason to market conditions; several teams were concerned about possible declines in their local TV revenues. Those concerns persist for many clubs, but most of the big-market teams are ready to spend, and spend big. Boras’ free-agent class also is larger and better than it was a year ago. It behooves him to take players off the board and keep the line moving.
On Monday, Boras reached an agreement with the Angels on a three-year, $63 million contract for free-agent left-hander Yusei Kikuchi. On Tuesday, he landed a deal for Snell that exceeded the four-year, $110 million prediction by The Athletic’s Tim Britton in both length and average annual value. Still to come for Boras: Soto, Corbin Burnes, Alex Bregman and Pete Alonso, as well as Sean Manaea and Ha-Seong Kim.
No more messing around. The winter meetings figure to be a Boras Fest, starting with Soto. The Dodgers delivered the first big-market strike on Tuesday night. It won’t be the last, not with the Red Sox, New York Mets, New York Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays, among others, raring to go.
(Photo of Blake Snell, left, and his agent Scott Boras: Ross D. Franklin / Associated Press)
