Snell joins an LA pitching staff that has many names potentially available to start in 2025, but all with questions of availability and durability.
The Dodgers won the World Series this year, but their October battlefield was littered with the landmines planted by having only three healthy and functioning starting pitchers throughout the postseason. It ultimately worked out, but it’s completely understandable that they were active at the top of the pitching market in free agency.
Blake Snell is thus a perfect fit for the Dodgers, in more ways than one. He satisfies the need for a topline starter to augment depth from the top of the rotation rather than the bottom. But Snell’s history also fits the modus operandi for Los Angeles, gathering pitchers who can be great when healthy but aren’t always available.
Snell had a 3.12 ERA in his 20 starts with the Giants in 2024, but was second in the majors among pitchers with at least 100 innings in xERA (2.54) and FIP (2.43), as well as strikeout rate (34.7 percent). Over the season’s final three months, the left-hander gave up only 12 runs in 14 starts, and allowed zero runs as often as he allowed any runs during that span.
But Snell also pitched only 104 innings, thanks to missing four weeks with a left adductor strain and another five weeks with a groin strain. In his nine years in the majors, Snell reached 130 innings only twice, and won a Cy Young Award in both seasons. He pitched 180⅔ innings with the Rays in 2018, and led the American League with a 1.89 ERA. In 2023 with the Padres, Snell led the majors with a 2.25 ERA in his 180 innings.
He’s topped a 30-percent strikeout rate in each of the last seven years. Snell’s 10.9-percent career walk rate is high, and sometimes limits how deep he pitches into games.
But while he’s on the mound, Snell is usually very good. Just ask the Dodgers, against whom he has a career 2.57 ERA with 110 strikeouts in 84 innings, and allowed two or fewer runs in 15 of his 17 career starts against them.
Now, Snell is pitching for the Dodgers, but let’s pump the brakes on listing the team’s rotation depth chart as if all or most of them will all be available at the same time.
As currently constructed, Snell and Yoshinobu Yamamoto can be reasonably expected to begin the 2025 season starting for the Dodgers.
Tyler Glasnow might be in that group too, but as a reminder he last pitched on August 11 and missed the final seven weeks plus postseason with a sprained elbow.
Tony Gonsolin rehabbed in Triple-A in September, but that was his only mound action of the season after Tommy John surgery. Dustin May was working his way back from his own elbow surgery – flexor tendon repair and Tommy John revision – but tore his esophagus in July, ending his season. Both could conceivably begin the season in the rotation, but I wouldn’t count such a thing as likely.
Shohei Ohtani is coming off his own Tommy John surgery in September 2023, but his pitching rehab is expected to continue into the early part of the season, and he won’t join the rotation right away.
Gavin Stone is out for next season after having shoulder surgery on October 9. River Ryan will likely miss the season after his August Tommy John surgery. Kyle Hurt had Tommy John surgery on July 30, and might be back in September. Emmet Sheehan’s hybrid Tommy John surgery was on May 15, and he is expected back in 2025, but not until the second half of the season.
Clayton Kershaw is still technically a free agent but will be back at some point. But he’s coming off foot surgery and left knee surgery, and the timing of his 2025 availability hasn’t yet been revealed.
Bobby Miller is coming off one of the worst pitching seasons in franchise history, a year in which he missed over two months with shoulder inflammation. Nick Frasso’s first year on the 40-man roster featured no mound action after shoulder and hip surgeries.
Landon Knack, Ben Casparius, and Justin Wrobleski all made their major league debuts in 2024 and will likely factor into 2025.
That is a large list with a ton of potential, but even more question marks. After a season in which the Dodgers placed 11 starting pitchers on the injured list, this should not be a surprise.
It’s a volume game, with the Dodgers amassing quantity in the hope that enough quality will be available when the time comes. Or at least that, of the group of pitchers that is available, that the production will be top notch. Blake Snell fits that mold to a tee.