Blake Snell Continues His NL West Tour With a Five-Year Dodgers Pact
If you’re a team in the market for a top starting pitcher this winter, cross one of the best off your holiday list. The Dodgers, a team desperately in need for dependable starting pitchers whose arms are fully connected at the shoulders and elbows, signed Blake Snell to a five-year contract worth $182 million. The deal also includes a $52 million signing bonus. Snell, one of last year’s big name free agents who signed a shorter-term deal after not getting the offer they wanted, started 20 games for the Giants in 2024, putting up a 3.12 ERA, a 2.43 FIP, and 3.1 WAR in a season that was marred by an adductor strain. Compared to last winter, when Snell’s fate went unanswered until he signed in late March, you might as well start calling him Blake Schnell. Wait, don’t do that, that’s a terrible joke even by my standards.
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 (@jeffpasan.bsky.social) 2024-11-27T04:00:23.933Z
One of the biggest risks a team winning the World Series faces is complacency. It’s a perfectly natural thing to feel pleased with the moves that led to your team winning a championship, but a team that believes it can mostly stand pat and run it back is planting the seeds of its own demise. Even with all the talent on their team, the Dodgers still have significant roster holes to fill this offseason, and it’s a good sign for those hoping for a repeat that less than a month after hoisting the trophy, they’ve already addressed one of those weaknesses. Whatever one thinks of Dave Roberts as a manager, it’s difficult to deny that he did a convincing job this past postseason managing a pitching staff that basically had two healthy and reliable starting pitchers. The Dodgers won the World Series despite their injury-thinned rotation, not because of it.
Now, Snell isn’t the type to give you seven or eight innings per start. Who is in 2024, really? What Snell brings to the table – outside of being a really good pitcher – is that he has a pretty solid record when it comes to injury. That’s not to say that he doesn’t get hurt. On the contrary, only twice has he made at least 30 starts in a season. However, what he has avoided are the serious injuries that cause pitchers to miss months or entire seasons. His IL stints are generally for short-term nagging ailments, frequently adductor strains. His worst elbow injury was a procedure to remove loose bodies in his elbow about five years ago, not major reconstructive surgery. The Dodgers will be happy to get their five or six innings from him 25 or so times a year.
Given what the Dodgers have faced injury-wise these last few years, that may be especially valuable to them. Bad luck has to figure into some of these injuries, but their problems in October was the downside of the approach they’ve taken toward the pitching staff in recent seasons. The Dodgers haven’t really prioritized certainty among their pitchers. Instead, they’ve depended on high-upside, high-risk guys such as Tyler Glasnow, late-era Clayton Kershaw, and any of the young flamethrowers who dominate upon arrival before blowing out their arms. For the most part, the Dodgers have made this work because they’ve kept enough of these pitchers around to put together a capable rotation of four or five pitchers at any given moment. Generally, this has proven an effective strategy for the Dodgers, but this time, they rolled snake eyes a few times in a row, and ended up in a difficult situation at the most crucial time of the year. They made it work, but they are smart enough to recognize they might not be able to thread the needle through such a narrow margin for error again.
So, what about Snell himself? Let’s run the projections for him with the Dodgers.
| Year | W | L | ERA | G | GS | IP | H | ER | HR | BB | SO | ERA+ | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 14 | 6 | 2.87 | 28 | 28 | 150.2 | 111 | 48 | 14 | 63 | 186 | 143 | 3.8 |
| 2026 | 14 | 5 | 3.05 | 28 | 28 | 147.2 | 113 | 50 | 14 | 62 | 176 | 134 | 3.5 |
| 2027 | 13 | 6 | 3.19 | 27 | 27 | 144.0 | 116 | 51 | 15 | 59 | 165 | 128 | 3.1 |
| 2028 | 12 | 6 | 3.38 | 27 | 27 | 138.1 | 117 | 52 | 16 | 58 | 153 | 121 | 2.7 |
| 2029 | 11 | 7 | 3.61 | 26 | 26 | 132.0 | 118 | 53 | 16 | 57 | 139 | 113 | 2.3 |
The Dodgers are projected as one of the absolute best teams for Snell to end up with, and ZiPS projects performance that it would value at five years, $144.2 million. That’s a bit below the actual $182 million deal he received, but then again, so is the actual contract itself! As with Shohei Ohtani, the top dollar figure becomes a bit less sexy when you consider how the deal is structured. Some of the money is deferred, to the extent that it drops the present value enough so that the deal is worth more in the neighborhood of $160 million instead.
In some respects, Snell’s 2024 season was more impressive than the 2023 campaign that earned him the second Cy Young award of his career. Snell allowed a lot of walks in 2023, but he survived it because he was excellent with runners on base. That’s the kind of thing that’s hard to sustain, but he didn’t have to in 2024, as he shaved off the extra walk per game he’d added the year before. Snell’s strikeout rate was the best of his career, and it was powered by a career best in contact percentage. Snell has been a successful starter in the majors for years, but he has more varied tools now than he did before. Most notably, his changeup has become more of a weapon against righties, especially with two strikes.
With Snell under contract, the Dodgers rotation looks something like this: Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Glasnow, and Shohei Ohtani, along with whichever one or two other starters are healthy at any given time. At least in the way-too-early ZiPS positional projections for 2025, Snell’s arrival leapfrogs the Dodgers over the Phillies, Mariners, and Braves for the top rotation in the majors, though things can change a bit depending on how your distribute the innings. And the Dodgers might not be done adding to their rotation, either. They are expected to be serious contenders to sign Roki Sasaki, and they could still bring back Kershaw on another one-year deal.
Does adding Snell fundamentally change the outlook for the Dodgers? Not really; they were always going to be a contender in 2025. However, what signing Snell does is give the Dodgers a better chance to get through the season with fewer surprises and go deep into the playoffs again. Not since the 1999-2000 Yankees a quarter century ago has a team won consecutive championships. Snell puts the Dodgers in a strong position to alter that factoid.
Dan Szymborski is a senior writer for FanGraphs and the developer of the ZiPS projection system. He was a writer for ESPN.com from 2010-2018, a regular guest on a number of radio shows and podcasts, and a voting BBWAA member. He also maintains a terrible Twitter account at @DSzymborski.
Wait hold on. Jeff Passan spelled his name wrong in his bsky handle?
Someone is squatting on his normal handle. Allegedly they were doing it to prevent misinformation, but it hasn’t been turned over yet.
If everything here is above-board, he could get the right spelling if he asks:
https://bsky.app/profile/jeffpassan.bsky.social
Is jeffpasan.bsky.social actually Jeff Passan? Why would he post fake news about Marcell Ozuna being in Trump’s cabinet?
https://bsky.app/profile/jeffpasan.bsky.social/post/3lbdshzgugk2d
Though I’d assume someone at FG reached out to him to confirm that was his profile.
Well the Red Sox are so far the leaders in the we tried contest as they came up short on Kikuchi and Snell so far.
They Might Be Giants
I mean yeah, the more players you’re said to have interest in, the more you miss out on. And Boston’s expressed interest in virtually every decent FA pitcher so far.
The Sox have run the same playbook for a number of years at this point saying they are in on a player when they have no interest of offering a competitive contract.
You can easily see this in the fact that there is seldom a dollar figure that’s leaked on an offered contract from the BoSox
The Dodgers strategy of “acquire as many starting pitchers as possible and hope a few are still alive come October” is better than a lot of team’s.
And yet, so many of them aren’t! Probably because something they are doing with the young guys in the pitching lab.
That strategy is a LOT easier when you have the payroll the Dodgers have. Yes, some of their starters were homegrown players, they get credit for that, but they “supplement” that with quite a number of high priced players that are unaffordable to most teams.
Is Fangraphs going away from X links?
Probably yes when possible, most of the writers moved over. I’ll refrain from analysis.
Running away like all the babies going to BlueSky. That place is worse than X to be honest.
Twitter literally down ranks tweets with links in them, so as a journalist it makes no sense to use it, regardless of politics.
You don’t need “literally” in your comment.
Acquiring Blake Snell for $182m? Ok. Acquiring Blake Snell and Roki Sasaki for around $185m? Yeahhhhhh
Read this in Drake meme format, Kudos!
The Dodgers’ payroll is already at $311M and Roster Resource still has Pages and Outman as starters. Intrigued to see how far they’re willing to go.
Meanwhile, Hal Steinbrenner cries about how he couldn’t possibly have a $300M payroll consistently, and his only FA signing in an all-in year with Soto was Marcus Stroman. The Dodgers are the new Yankees. This must’ve been like what it felt to see the Yankees acquire Clemens right after winning 114 games and the World Series.
That would have been an incredibly long revenge plan considering that transaction was multiple dodgers owners ago
Perhaps some will see the connection of the Ohtani signing as a business as well as baseball contract. That contract made them about $100 million in profit. Consider more ppl watched the WS in Japan than the US. The Dodgers are putting that profit back into the team, just like other corporations. The Yankees simply started spending big once they stopped winning WS in 2000. Their expenditures only broke from league norms after they lost in 2001.
How does viewership in Japan profit the Dodgers?
extensive sponsorships with japanese advertisers
High ratings = higher rates for sponsors and bigger TV deals. This is how big market teams make more $.
The Dodgers’ payroll is not the Dodgers’ payroll. I don’t know how they’re able to get away with this, but we are witnessing obvious financial/tax fraud.
The Dodgers, due to their TV deal, are on an aquifer of money. The Dodgers, via deferrals and funny accounting tricks, have been able to do an end-around mechanisms designed to constrain big market, high payroll teams, e.g. Competitive Balance Tax.
The Dodgers are able to spend tens of millions of dollars they don’t declare for the Competitive Balance Tax; and all the money they save from deferred salaries frees them up to do the kinds of things we keep seeing, like the recent Blake Snell acquisition.
financial fraud? tax fraud? they’re very creative at working around the Competitive Balance Tax, but tax fraud? financial fraud?
Maybe they’re trying to take payroll high enough the union finally agrees to a salary floor/hard cap combo. Still, they’re nowhere close to that yet.
In the meantime, they are spending money to make money.
As long as they get a proper ROI they’ll keep on gaming the system.
Why would the dodgers having a high payroll influence the union to agree to a cap/floor?
Because if they do monopolize the WS it will inhibit attendance and thus spending of other teams. Which is not in the union’s best interest. Fans like to think their team has a chance to go all the way. Or at least deep Into the playoffs. But if the Dodgers run the table every year just buying the best talent, why bother?
The union can use the hard cap to negotiate a high floor and earlier arb and other issues. Come bargaining time there are usually three sides; the union, the big budget teams, and the others. Even high revenue teams prefer lower payroll limits to maximize their income so “reckless” spending is frowned upon, which is how the Cohen rule came about.
Just because a team owner can afford a cap-busting payroll doesn’t mean they want one.
A team hasn’t repeated as WS champs in over 20 years and only a few have even made back to back appearances. Maybe worry about that problem if it ever happens (it won’t, with so many playoff rounds)
Yeah, no. It’s not gonna happen that the dodgers are gonna run the table every year, and the players are just gonna be happy having a team spend money.
Adopt a hard cap and this fan waves bye-bye.
I believe there is definitely some form of Tax/Financial fraud going on. I believe it’s happening in multiple ways.
1.) The Dodgers clearly have this money to spend. The Dodgers spend a certain amount of money, but they declare a lot less to MLB. Of the $70 million the Dodgers pay Ohtani, only $44.6 million is “taxable” according to the Competitive Balance Tax. The Dodgers have repeated this tactic with Yoshi Yamamoto and (I believe) several of their players.
2.) The deferred money not only gives the Dodgers more money they can spend currently, but it helps keep them below important Luxury Tax thresholds. Were they taxed on everything they’re actually spending, in addition to the $325+ million they’re paying in payroll, the Dodgers would have to write a check for 110% that amount to MLB, which MLB would distribute to the Rays, A’s, Royals, Brewers, and other small(er)-market teams.
Because of their financial trickery, the Dodgers are able to concurrently save money on their current payroll, and they’re able to pay substantially less in Competitive Balance Tax to MLB. The Dodgers, with the years they’ve been over the Luxury Tax threshold and with the amount they exceed it, should be writing MLB a ~$360 million check. Instead, the Dodgers can spend $325+ million, but they’re taxed as though it were ~$250 million.
Instead of having to pay MLB 110% of ~$325+ million – about $360 million – the Dodgers pay MLB 50% of ~$250: $~125 million. That’s $230+ million in Competitive Balance Tax the Dodgers are evading.
2.) This isn’t specific to the Dodgers, but clearly, the way Ohtani’s contract is structured allows Ohtani to evade California and U.S. Federal Income Tax. When he returns to Japan after his career, Ohtani will get his money and will probably be able to avoid significant taxes.
Especially when there’s so much poverty and suffering, and when individuals and vital programs are struggling financially so badly, it’s rather sickening seeing a bunch of millionaires and billionaires who clearly have plenty of money avoiding paying their fair share in taxes.
There’s important context, here!
…the Dodgers have a significantly lower operating income than the Yankees.
Clemens>Snell
Never trust owners to tell the truth about their profitablity with the exception of Atlanta.
Yeah we obviously need a salary cap
More than that, we need billionaires who are willing to do more than sit on their assets and watch them grow without putting any more money into them than they absolutely have to.
Not all ‘billionaires’ are created equal. Some obviously have much more money than others. If your net worth is ~1 billion, I’m guessing it doesn’t make much sense to spend 400 M on a baseball team each year. Could they ‘afford’ it? Maybe. But I’m assuming it isn’t smart business. These people aren’t exactly renowned for their financial illiteracy
they aren’t spending 400m of their own money every year, don’t worry
If we’re talking about financial literacy then equating the owner’s net worth with a payroll account for the organization is not it
you know that these businesses do have revenue, right? the payroll doesn’t come straight from the owner’s pocket.
This isn’t specific to Major League Baseball, but we, as a society, must recognize something has gone severely wrong. While I do blame the billionaire owners and the system the most, we must admit that everyone is overpaid now. Not even the best players are worth this kind of money, not when people are starving and society is falling apart.
The owners don’t deserve this much money. Players should be very well-compensated, but not in excess of $180, $250, $350, $700 million contracts.
The cost has fallen on the average fan.
The game needs a COMMISSIONER. Since the owners forced-out Fay Vincent, every move they make is guided only by what’s good for the owners’ bank accounts. Things are deemed successful or unsuccessful, not based on how much a genuine baseball fan enjoys the experience of taking-in a ballgame, but by how much profit was generated.
For years, my family could go to a ballgame and get a few hot dogs and the whole thing was around $50 for a four people. Then, $50 turned into $100; and now, for the same thing, complete with all these annoyances like security checks and people not being able to enter the stadium because the ticket isn’t scanning from their phone, you could easily be talking $250-300.
And you have to pay for cable or satellite to watch your team’s home games. And even if you do that AND you subscribe to MLB.TV, there will still be games you can’t watch unless you have Prime, Peacock, Apple TV, and on and on and on.
The system rots, and when I sit here and think about, it’s mostly ultra-rich owners on the grift. But the system being what it is, the players and agents, while looking better than the owners, are still often very unappealing, in their own right.
I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but you are making a very common mistake; player salaries are not connected to the cost of attendance (or cable, or anything else).
Those costs reflect what people are willing to pay – they are the product of supply and demand. If the players made less money, the *owners would simply pocket more of it*. They would not, out of the kindness of their hearts, charge less for the product than people are willing to pay. The only question in regard to player salaries is *what percentage* of what people are willing to play should go to the players.
The costs would be the same even if players were making the 2024 equivalents of what they were paid before Drysdale and Koufax held out for more money in the 1960s. It doesn’t have anything to do with costs. Prices are optimized to maximize revenue overall in terms of filling the seats in the park and getting the TV deal. If they were too high, people wouldn’t pay for them – but they do pay for them.
No entertainment product of higher quality than high school sports or community theatre operates in a non-profit way. It might be nice if some of them did, but we don’t live in a society where things work that way. And given that reality, salaries are just all about what percentage of the money should go to the people performing who you come to see.
This is an argument I hear people make. However, when I read their arguments, I never see any proof to back it up.
In 1993, the Toronto Blue Jays had a team payroll of $45,747,666.
In 1996, the NY Yankees had a team payroll of $52,189,370 million.
These were top-tier payrolls. Now, owners pay TOP PLAYERS as much or more in one year than they used to pay for their ENTIRE TEAMS not even thirty years ago.
There’s NO WAY costs aren’t being passed along to the consumer.
The owners have an agent (Rob Manfred.) The players have their own agents and the MLBPA.
The FANS need an agent at the negotiating table. What greedy owners have done and are doing to this sport is nauseating.
I dunno how to explain this to you if you don’t understand basic economics and supply and demand. Baseball is a monopoly product. What competition they do face is not identical and is similarly situated with only moderate overlap.
Baseball teams turn enormous profit. They’re not money-losing enterprises. Businesses subject to competition are encouraged to moderate prices because otherwise they’ll be undercut by a competitor offering the same thing for less. In many cases, they’re operating on extreme volume and narrow profit margin per sale.
Baseball doesn’t face negative price pressure due to competition. Most teams fill their stadiums most of the time. People are willing to pay the prices they pay now. Yes, many can’t afford it – but there’s no shortage of those who can.
People have a lot of disposable income for entertainment and they’re used to spending a lot on it. The only way that player salaries impact what people spend is in how it allows them to mentally justify that the price might be fair or reasonable.
Teams raise prices all the time. Tickets go up. Concessions go up. People complain, they talk about going less, they talk about or even do cancel season tickets.
And then attendance numbers don’t go down. Other people pay the price.
If you think MLB owners would cut ticket prices if player salaries went down by half , you are delusional. People will pay today’s rates. These companies have algorithms to help them price tickets so that revenue is maximized – even when it produces outcomes where overall revenue is maximized but some seats remain empty (because the price difference of the ones that sold more than made up for it).
They tell you that it’s salaries. Or taxes. Or renovations. But if or when those costs change – when they get a tax break, or a publicly funded renovation or new stadium – their tickets don’t get cheaper
They just pocket more money. Because they can. Because people will pay.
I agree you don’t know how to explain it because there’s no honest way of avoiding the obvious truth.
When the top team payrolls in baseball were $45-50 million, it cost me $10-12 to sit in the upper deck of Yankee Stadium. I used to pay for cable, and I could watch all the games.
Now, top payrolls are $300+ million, over six times as much. Now, the same ticket that cost me $10-12 costs $60+. If I buy cable, I still have to buy Amazon Prime, Peacock, Apple TV, etc… if I want to see every game.
You can’t explain how teams’ spending $250+ million more on payroll doesn’t increase the burden of cost on the fans because OBVIOUSLY all the extra payroll expenditures DO impact prices paid by fans.
Maybe YOU need the course in basic economics. The reason tickets and TV prices are more is because the entire operational costs have greatly increased, and that has a lot to do with payrolls. This is why restaurants cost more now: due to inflation, FOOD costs more, and this cost is passed on to the consumer.
You’re right: it’s basic economics.
The Dodgers are owned by a corporation, not a single Big bucks billionaire.
And their spending isn’t “win at all costs” but tactical spending to grow profits. Winning is welcome but almost secondary. “spending money to make money” is simply good business.
Fiduciary duty.
Unless you have access to their books, you don’t know what their financial situation is. Stop pretending otherwise.
I appreciate the effort in getting a membership for a troll account (if you’re not a troll, I assume you’re advertising a cheap, SoCal jewellery store – good luck with your business!)
Not sure how this is trolling, MLB desperately needs parity if it plans to continue as a legitimate major sport. We already saw a whole lot of apathy towards LA-NYY in the WS. Every other US based sports league has a cap to limit the insanity of haves and have nots that baseball clings to. In addition, they have marked national revenue sharing that favors the health of all teams over the few big city markets. Its easy to say spend more cheap owners, but there is no way a mid-market team can afford $300M a year. When you have equal revenue and equal spending expectations you fix a ton of the cheap owner issues.
The Rangers and D-Backs World Series was last year. MLB already has more parity as far as champion are concerned than the salary cap sports. The NFL has fans convinced there is a script because of how much the same teams win.
True..but, that’s only because so much of an NFL team’s success is due to QB & the league is set up so teams can keep those guys.
If the NFL had the same rules as MLB then Mahomes, Allen, Lamar, Peyton Manning, Drew Brees, Rodgers, Favre, Roethlisberger would have signed with New York, LA, Chicago, Dallas, etc as soon as they were free agents instead of ALL playing for smaller market cities (KC, GB, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, NO, Indy, Buffalo) for the vast majority of their careers.
I, for one, would be perfectly fine with players being able to freely shop their services to their preferred employers just like the rest of us. And I’m a Bills fan. I super don’t think Terry Pegula needs to be protected from Jerry Jones. Let them fight
Assumes facts not in evidence. You don’t know where they would sign, and they can’t all sign with the same handful of teams.
The NFL shares media money. It’s that simple. Has nothing to do with the salary cap. That’s just a way of saving rich assholes from themselves.
Rangers are in Dallas, not a sleepy town. NFL is awful but one thing they have done well is revenue sharing. People always dismiss “salary caps” but ideally you would have cap and floor with large portion of revenue distributed league wide. Then you would get a more balanced league.
Another bad faith argument: when the Patriots were dominant, no parity!! They had a HOF QB and an excellent coach, but no structural advantage. The Patriots did not have access to players and coaches that other teams did not. Same is just not true in baseball.
Problem with material revenue sharing is that most of the engrained actors don’t want it: big team owners, no. media with most of their customers in big markets, no. small market owners, meh. They can point to obvious market inequities and manage their clubs for profit rather than success. Big market fans, no. They might pretend, but if the Pirates were spending as much as their Yankees, Red Sox or Dodgers, they would feel aggrieved. Small market fans, yes. The sole constituency that really wants competitive balance of resources (not outcomes).
No, you wouldn’t. Name another job where you’re salary capped, then explain to me why athletes should be treated differently.
MLB has more parity than any other prof sport and ask the NHL how the salary cap has helped their efforts to fall behind college and women’s sports in popularity
(edit: to be clear, no shade intended to student athletes/prof women’s athletes, who are better off with more money that they finally have some leverage to gain!)
On field parity, yes. For now.
Revenue parity?
Not remotely close.
There is a showdown coming as MLB takes over more and more local video rights. Eventually the 4-5 teams that own their own distribution channels will be called on the carpet. Who is going to bell the cat to get enduring parity?
As pointed out all over here, the Dodgers have the biggest revenue streams and the spending efficiency of the smallest market teams. It is a powerful combination.
Who cares? Why do the teams have to have revenue parity? So our economic system is capitalism except for sports which should be communism?
You do realize MLB isn’t a capitalist free market but a partnership, right? Why do you think they need an antitrust exemption?
I do. I think it’s dumb.
MLB doesn’t NEED an antitrust exemption, guy. Nice to have, I’m sure.
And as I’ll keep pointing out, you don’t see their books. You’re talking through your hat.
I am far more likely to watch a college softball game than an NHL game.
(I’m…also more likely to watch a college softball game than most MLB games. It’s just a more exciting product!)
A lot of apathy towards the Yankees/Dodgers matchup? It was the most watched WS in 5 years.
Their username is “2FakeRingsLA”, that’s where I’m getting the trolling from, rather than the salary cap comment.
I’m British, and doesn’t really follow other US sports, so to me, baseball is incredibly egalitarian. In the EPL, there is huge disparity between the richest teams, and the poorest – far more than in baseball. Crystal Palace and Arsenal are geographically close, but aren’t competing on anywhere near a level playing field. But Crystal Palace, despite being a relatively poor English top flight team, by playing in the EPL, can pretty much outbid most continental teams, aside from those who regularly play Champions League football. I think often the poorest team in the top division, La Liga, in Spain have a budget about 5% of that of the top teams. So yeah, I don’t view baseball as being an especially unequal sport.
I do wonder if it is good to have “an evil Empire” in the Dodgers or Yankees for people to root against. (I do say this as a Dodgers fan – I’m not going to lie and say my position wouldn’t change if I happened to have become a fan of the Pirates) The last repeat winners were the Yankees, in the last millennium (as, also being a pedant, the new millennium began in 2001) – in the last Effectively Wild, the listeners gave a 17% chance of having another first time winner in World Series in 2024 – and baseball does seem to have quite a healthy distribution of World Series winners.
The distribution of WS winners has more to do with the length of the regular season (and the inevitable slumps and injuries) and the vagaries of the playoff format. Combined they allow teams to win the WS without being clearly superior.
Which is fine since the objective is entertainment.
Don’t kid yourself. The objective is giving bettors something to bet on.
In every sport, there are franchises that have great deal of trouble identifying and developing talent, a salary cap won’t help that situation.
Also, there are a few teams that won’t select certain players in the draft that they have deemed too expensive. Refusing to compete.
Wait, do we think there would have been more interest in the world series if it was Kansas City vs. Milwaukee? Nah.
And why do the big market teams have to prop up the small ones? If the Yankees or Dodgers want to put together a good team, why is that subject to a bunch of crappy teams whining? I don’t see everyone in the rest of the world saying Getafe needs to have an equal chance at signing Mbappe or else soccer is ruined.
And I don’t watch a single one of them. And I’ll drop baseball if they move to this idiotic method of saving rich assholes from themselves.
I would like to discuss a salary cap, though. Salary cap and floor. Even a staggered soft cap like the NBA would be a step in the right direction imo.
“Doesn’t the luxury tax function like that?” No. It functions like a luxury tax. It does exactly what it’s supposed to do, which is impose solely financial penalties on only the owner. But there’s absolutely nothing stopping a team from spending $1,000,000,000+ a season if they wanted to and had the means.
Having a cap means having non-monetary penalties for exceeding it, like restrictions on who and how much you can sign for/with. NBA teams can’t use their max salary exception if they’re over the cap, and can’t use any at all past the second apron. If you use the taxpayer exception, the second apron also becomes a hard cap, and it cannot be exceeded during the season, barring things like minimum salary contracts or reinstatement. That includes money put into incentive clauses in contracts, which counts towards the cap unless it’s considered an “unlikely” incentive that the player would have to stun everyone to hit, as well as by trade.
Salary floor is necessary by virtue of a cap, also. It shouldn’t be as restrictive as the NBA’s “90% of the salary cap” rule imo, but at least $100 million per year should be spent on player payroll. Five teams ducked under that this past season, including one playoff team in the Tigers. Nine teams ducked under $110 million, including two more playoff teams. That is in contrast to six of the remaining nine playoff teams spending at least $230 million.
The best argument for a cap is the institution of a floor.
Just please no NBA-style cap that requires a Ph.D. to understand.
MLB doesn’t really have salary exceptions or salary-based trade rules, so it wouldn’t be that complicated, lol. Plus picks are simply given a signing bonus, not signed to different contracts based on their draft position. Those two things are the biggest reason the cap is complicated for the NBA.
Outside of the minimum salary exception (you can sign or promote as many minimum salary players as you want, you just have to be able to fill out your roster and pay them plus any tax costs), there probably wouldn’t need to be any either.
AFAIK the NBA didn’t have those things either before they implemented their salary cap.
Anyway, I’m just saying…as a baseball fan, make things simple and don’t overcomplicate them. Granted, I’m not expecting this to happen any time soon but if it ever does…KISS.
Yes and no. It was implemented because the NBA had many of the same problems that MLB already resolved with owners undercutting players and constraining player movement through collusion and coercive practices. Not likely to come up in the same fashion or to the same degree.
Also Rob Manfred can’t run a league that well, so he would likely want fewer rules for himself to trip over. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
These are problems for owners, no one else. If “your team” doesn’t spend money, root for another one. Don’t solve what is YOUR problem by fucking over the earning power of the athletes.
Two responses to this:
1) Competitive balance is an enormous issue. It’s super messed up that the Dodgers can do this and other teams can’t. I think it’s unreasonable to look at this and say “oh yeah, this is even,” but it’s very reasonable to disagree about what the proposed solution should be.
2) The Dodgers have become a phenomenally boring team. Woo hoo, financial powerhouse collects the biggest stars on the planet, unconstrained by budget! Great for Dodgers fans, boring for everyone else.
The Dodgers are so boring that 48,000 people show up to every home game, and there are many more paying subscription fees funding their $8+ billion TV deal. And now they get 15 million people in Japan watching their playoff games, earning many more millions or perhaps over 100 million.
Competitive balance?!! Yeah, it really sucked for the NBA to have the Lakers, Celtics, Bulls and Warriors go on their championship runs. And the NFL has really suffered from having the Patriots, Steelers and the Chiefs go to 15 of the last 23 Super Bowls. Dynasties sell!!
Yeah, it’s great for the Dodgers fans! Not so much for the others. Super dull. Why even root for your local team?
Indeed, who says you have to root for your local team? I love the way people are willing to restrict the earnings of athletes but not, say, tech bros.
They also acquire and develop amateur talent better than most teams.
I don’t think anyone’s saying “it’s even.” I see two arguments: one is that it’s even enough. Second, which is mostly just me, is I don’t care for it be even.
I mean, how even do we have to get? Let’s not Harrison Bergeron this, ya know?
I think the real problem is that if it’s not even a lot of fans in other markets tune out. Why even bother? This is not a problem for Yankees or Dodgers fans, at least until other teams and/or their fans just give up. And in many cases they have.
Baseball is not a popular sport in most markets. At some point baseball has to decide if it wants to be a national sport or if it’s just going to put the bottom 10 markets out of its misery.
I thought you were hot on Baumann’s lunacy about expanding to 40 teams or some such nonsense back in 2022, no?
Yeah because I like the idea of a national sport. I also like the idea of putting teams in New Jersey, Connecticut, and various parts of the LA sprawl. Clearly there is enough to go around. I would prefer to create economic parity by creating more competition in hot markets but there are alternatives if those aren’t options.
Dude why do you care so much about bad fans?! Have people really stopped rooting for the Rockies because the Dodgers signed Blake Snell? Are Guardians fans holding memorial services to their fandom because the Dodgers signed Blake Snell? Royals fans??? Gasp, Dbacks fans?! I don’t think so. And how do you call the Dodgers boring? Is it JUST how a team is built that interests you? Plenty of other teams utilizing other roster building models, why do they all need to do the same thing to construct a team?
This might be the most wrong-headed thing you’ve ever posted here. I usually agree with you, but most people who go the ballpark aren’t really concerned with who’s going to win the World Series.
I’m with you on this. Gloom and doom prognostications about the sport follow every big market free agent signing. Heck, they followed the beginning of free agency in the 70s. And typically only supported by anecdotal nonsense. “Fans of teams in small markets will check out!” Or “player salaries make everything too expensive!” The “economic parity” one is pretty silly…especially if you care about this more than COMPETITIVE parity. The same fans who made fun of the dodgers for not having won a “real” ring now say they’ll run the table and destroy interest in the game. Or that this last World Series with all its stars and high ratings, caused apathy among fans despite being most watched since 2017 (and up 67% from last year). Good lord. They’ll ignore small market success and parity in the MLB and champion the dynasties that proliferate in the NFL…and then invent reasons why this is okay.
Who is “we”? They’ve ruined every sport that has adopted one.
The Giants gave up a draft pick and bonus pool money to sign Snell. They then refused to trade him at the deadline even though their playoff odds were sub-18%. They then let him sign with their biggest rival. Joke of an organization.
Zaidi was still there at the deadline. After Snell’s refusal to pitch Game 162, I’m happy to be able to hate him completely now. A pox on both their houses.
I get fandom has its irrational elements (and I fully appreciate you’re going to boo good pitcher who opted out to sign for rival team) – but is Snell not pitching in a meaningless game 162 something to hate him for?
If you know he’s going to opt out, surely you don’t want him to pitch – if he blows out his elbow/shoulder, your team is then paying him $30 million in 2025 to recovery from the injury.
Good point about the downside of an injury. However remote the possibility was or wasn’t. I thought he handled his pulling himself from the start poorly, in a sort of noblesse oblige. But absolutely right, as long as he’s a Dodger I don’t need much reason not to wish him well. I don’t wish him any harm, just a lack of effectiveness. And stop calling me shirley.
Yes, he absolutely should have risked his future earnings for a dog–crap team nine games out of a wild card slot with one game to play. 4D chess.
Because throwing ~90 pitches for a team that paid him $31million in a game where at least a few folks paid to see him pitch and saying nothing to anybody about it in advance would absolutely have resulted in an injury. How could I have not thought of that?
The Giants appear to have an institutional phobia about not being seen as contenders at the deadline, which causes them to hang on to guys a beat longer than they really should. I remember suggesting to Giants fan friends after 2016 that their team should think about trading Bumgarner because they were in for a run of lean years (that 2016 team barely eked out a WC slot in Even Year Bullshit’s last stand) where he would 1) decline and 2) quickly become a luxury item, and getting laughed out of rooms.
They did the same thing with Matt Cain a few years earlier when he was clearly starting to struggle but still had the cachet of two rings, and they punted on that one as well so they could have the honor of paying him for five more years where he was one of the worst starters in the league but retired as a career Giant.
I just find it odd that the Dodgers were completely uninterested in Snell last offseason and now they are willing to pay top dollar for him. He had draft pick compensation last year but now he is a year older.
Well, they did give out a pair of contracts in excess of $1B before the new year last offseason.
Maybe it’s as simple as that.
I do think they started last season with a huge amount of depth (though they did exchange some depth in trading Pepiot for Glasnow). Emmet Sheehan and River Ryan were like 9th and 10th on the depth chart. So it does make sense that they didn’t feel the need to get Snell, even when his market cratered.
But they have no depth now, because they are all injured (or in Bobby Millers case, he was injured and his performance took a big step back). And they probably made a bit of cash in winning the World Series.
Here’s the thing from the Dodger perspective: they might have figured they could get both of them if they were patient. And that worked.
Also, Snell’s “top dollar” contract that they’re giving him, with deferrals, works out to be only about a million a year more than the Giants paid him last year. They just gave him a longer deal with no opt-outs.
Dodgers going for 5 and dive, high-strikeout, six man rotation with as many bullpen guys as they can. It might even work, as long as they don’t have to count on any young guy just out of AAA to stay healthy as a starter.
I mean that just won them a World Series.
Whoosh
That’s not exactly what they did last year, but sure, if you score enough runs you don’t need pitching at all.
Sort of seems like they have been making it work…
I wonder if the Dodgers making this move before Thanksgiving will inspire other owners to open up the pocketbooks.
Looking at the guesses from Ben (3 years, $105M) & CrowdSourcing (4 yrs, $120M) . The #’s were WAY off, length from Ben & AAV for the crowd.
Ben & the crowd were both about 20% light on Kikuchi, too. (3 yrs, $50-51M),
Usually much closer than that. Hot starting pitching market?
Market scarcity for SP innings should drive the price up
MLBTR nailed this contract at 5/$160, so it was not completely unexpected.
I recall being about 25% higher on nearly every free agent against the crowdsourced estimates. Think people way overestimated the Bally Sports fallout and way underestimated the top-end competitive inflation and assessment of this FA class against the next two (very thin and very weak)
I guess things are still left to play out and there may be some deals once the Dodgers, Mets, Yanks, Red Sox and Jays are done
Isn’t the crowdsourcing usually kinda low just because it’s an aggregate whereas the team that signs the deal is (usually) by definition the single highest bidder?
I feel like we’re going to see a hollowing out of the free agent middle class – the top-end guys will get crazy high deals and the mid and lower-tier guys will be waiting it out and fighting for scraps. Not a lot of 5 WAR guys to be had out there so teams will push their chips in for them, but 1-2 WAR guys are viewed as fungible assets.
I can see 3 years at around $100-110M and maybe a 4th year option. 5 years for $182M is too long and too much, Snell might qualify twice for the ERA tile in those 5 years.
IMO the Dodgers will live to rue a five-year contract to a guy who, as the article notes, has yet to suffer his major arm injury.
Would I walk into a room and give a 32 yr old pitcher with an injury history 5 yrs? Probably not. But if I had near infinite-resources and it solved one of my major problems, thus allowing me to be successful with near infinite-resources? YES.
I do wonder if this means they’re less confident about Sasaki ending up with them.
I actually wonder if it’s the opposite on Sasaki. If you think you’re getting him for peanuts, then it’s easier to take a high risk upside shot than if you didn’t and had less margin for error.
To be clearer, I don’t think it changes their willingness to sign him, but they can’t throw money at him like they can at free agents, so it’s a bit less certain where he ends up
True, but if forced to bet I’d wager he’ll join his two countrymen in LA.
In there any way to check splits for best stretches of however many games in MLB history by WAR? Like best game, best 2 game, best 10 game stretches by WAR?
I think I read “five or six innings from him 25 or so times a year”. What has the game come to when this workload commands $182 million over a span of years that is, I think, somewhere between 5 and infinity? This ability of the large market teams to create this type of disparity between the haves and havenots is going to lead to more teams enduring seasons similar to the 2024 White Sox. In 2025 two franchises are going to play in stadiums that cannot accommodate more than a smattering of fans.
It looks like the bush leagues are already eating away at the fabric of the game which is absolutely pitiful.
The White Sox had the highest opening day payroll in their division. Whatever their problem is, it’s not from being a financial “havenot”.
since 2020, Snell is 46th in IP, but 19th in fWAR, 13th in ERA, 11th in FIP and first in K/9. He’s a really good pitcher.
I like the way you shoehorned the fact that a stadium was destroyed by a hurricane into a “what has the game become?” post.
This is an above average expected perform for a starting pitcher in 2024. Not just in quality, but very few guys reliably give you 140 or 150 innings period.
I didn’t love Snell last off-season and I still don’t but I also think he was by far the best available starter once Cole returned to NYY, and that doesn’t reflect a poor class but that Snell is comfortably one of the 15 or 20 best starting pitchers in MLB and his weakness in wasting pitches and not going deep in just the status quo for everyone anyway.
He’s an extremely 2020s pitcher but he’s very much one of the very best of them. He’s not being overpaid. This is what pitchers are now and what good ones cost.
I forget what he was looking for last year but this is a nice piece of business for him. He got one year 30 mil bag from the giants plus the 160 m bag accounting for deferrals at a year older. That is pretty comfortably better than the 150m he was offered by NYY last year.
I wonder what he’ll do with 190 million that he couldn’t do with 150 million.
Oh my gosh do I love the whining. Its like everyone is ready to give the Dodgers the world series already.
“However, what signing Snell does is give the Dodgers a better chance to get through the season with fewer surprises and go deep into the playoffs again.”
Also, what it does, is keep him away from the roster of a team they’d possibly be competing against for another championship. Obvious? Yes, but not any more obvious than the quoted statement.