Thirty-two-year-old Dodgers left-hander Blake Snell notched his third win of the 2025 season (with one loss) on Saturday, doing so in very dominating fashion.
“The stuff was really good. Obviously, this is a team that doesn’t strike out very much. They put the ball in play, so it just speaks to how good Blake’s stuff was,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts told reporters following his team’s 9-1 pounding of the American League Central first-place Toronto Blue Jays in front of a Dodger Stadium crown of 44,727 on Saturday evening. “I think everything was on, the fastball, the change-up, the curveball.”
“It’s good, it’s getting better, seeming to command the fastball better, get ahead,” the Seattle, WA native and first-round draft pick in 2011 by the (wait for it…) Tampa Bay Rays out of Shorewood High school in Shoreline, WA. “Started off good, and then as the game goes on, I just gotta clean it up. Four-pitch walk to (Rays center fielder Daulton) Varsho, gotta be better, especially what I know I can do to a successful at-bat against him. So, still a lot of work to do, there’s a lot of things I can do better and help me get deeper into the game, but overall, feeling healthy, I’m really excited about that,” added Snell.
(SportsNet LA)
With his dominate start on Saturday (including 10 strikeouts and no walks), Snell is now 3-1 on the season with 22 strikeouts and 11 walks. He also now owns a Kershaw-like 2.37 ERA through his first four starts.
(SportsNet LA)
As noted, this was Snell’s fourth start of the season and second since returning from the injured list for left shoulder inflammation. But judging by his performance on Saturday (which included striking out six of the first nine batters he faced and 10 of 21 on the day), it certainly appears that he’s back to the Blake Snell that Dodgers fans are quite familiar with – the one who tossed MLB’s only complete-game shutout in 2024 against the Dodgers while with the San Francisco Giants.
Snell signed a five-year/$182 million contract with the Dodgers this past offseason but landed on the IL after only a combined 9.0 innings pitched. That said, if his start on Saturday is any indication of what’s to come from the hard-throwing lefty, he may soon have a third Cy Young Award (first as a Dodger) in his trophy case.
As for those nine Dodgers runs, the first two came on Max Muncy‘s 16th home run of the season, a 342-foot two-run shot to left with no outs in the bottom of the fourth inning. They scored one more on international superstar Shohei Ohtani‘s 40th home run of the season, a 417-foot solo shot to center with one out in the bottom of the fifth, to give the Dodgers a then 3-0 lead.
(SportsNet LA)
“That was one of those swings where he was behind the ball. He stayed into the ground,” Roberts said postgame of Ohtani’s blast. “I know he and the hitting guys have been working on some things mechanically. That was as good of a swing as you’re going to see.”
The Dodgers added six more runs in the bottom of the sixth inning when they sent 11 batters to the plate that included a single to right and a double to left by 24-year-old Dodgers outfielder Andy Pages to drive in two of those six sixth-inning Dodgers runs.
Good stuff indeed.
Play Ball!
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