The Dodgers have placed left-hander Blake Snell on the 15-day injured list due to inflammation in his throwing shoulder. The placement is retroactive to April 3. Right-hander Matt Sauer was called up from Triple-A to take Snell’s spot on the active roster.
Despite allowing eight walks in nine innings of work this season, Snell emerged with a 2.00 ERA over his first two starts of the season. It seems as if this shoulder issue developed in between Snell’s last outing on April 2 and a bullpen session today, as Jack Harris of the L.A. Times reports that Snell talked with GM Brandon Gomes and team trainer Thomas Albert in the aftermath of the bullpen.
This is the tenth visit to the injured list Snell has taken over his 10 MLB seasons, and today’s news continues his career-long theme of both health concerns and early-season issues. Snell is somewhat infamously a slow starter, with a 3.95 ERA over 555 2/3 career innings prior to the All-Star break, and then a 2.32 ERA in 500 innings over the second halves of seasons.
These splits notwithstanding, there are few pitchers in the game better than Snell when he’s in top form, as evidenced by his two Cy Young Awards. The 2024 campaign was another example of Snell’s hot-and-cold tendencies, as he signed with the Giants late in Spring Training and subsequently spent much of the first three months either injured or struggling, until the switch flipped and Snell posted a 1.23 ERA over his final 80 1/3 frames of the season.
Snell was encouraged enough by this spectacular finish to opt out of the final season (and $30MM) of his contract with the Giants, and that decision proved to be wise, as Los Angeles signed Snell to a five-year, $182MM free agent deal. The contract is worth “only” around $160MM-$165MM in current value since $65MM of Snell’s salary is deferred, yet it still represented the big long-term payday that eluded Snell in his previous trip to free agency.
The fact that Snell has already gone on the IL will bring some fresh questions about the Dodgers’ investment, yet there isn’t any indication that Snell’s shoulder inflammation is anything serious. It does leave the Dodgers in a bit of a tricky spot when it comes to filling Snell’s rotation spot, as Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki are both only being used once per week, replicating the standard usage of a Japanese pitching rotation. Landon Knack, Justin Wrobleski, and Bobby Miller are the likeliest candidates to receive a Triple-A call-up and at least one spot start in Snell’s place.
In the bigger picture, Tony Gonsolin is on a Triple-A rehab assignment, and Clayton Kershaw (toe/knee surgeries) and Emmet Sheehan (Tommy John surgery) are expected to be available later in the season. Shohei Ohtani is also slowly ramping up his pitching workload in preparation of his mound debut in a Dodgers uniform, though it will still be at least a couple of months before Ohtani becomes available from a pitching perspective. In theory, Los Angeles has enough pitching depth available or eventually available to withstand another injury-riddled year like 2024, though Snell’s injury underlines the difficulty the Dodgers face in trying to maintain and preserve a staff of so many pitchers with significant durability questions.