Dodgers Sign Free Agent Blake Snell to 5-Year, $182 Million Deal

Free agent left-hander Blake Snell and the Los Angeles Dodgers have agreed to a five-year, $182 million settlement, assets advised ESPN on Tuesday night.

The deal, which is pending a physical, consists of no opt-outs, a few deferred funds, and a $52 million signing bonus, sources said.

For the Dodgers, Snell gives the World Series champions a frontline starter for their identify defense subsequent season after they survived October with the aid of relying closely on their bullpen with just 3 healthy starters. For Snell, the percent marks a much faster and more enjoyable end to his 2nd stint as a free agent.

The $182 million settlement is the 1/3 biggest for a left-exceeded pitcher in main league history based on total value, at the back of most effective David Price’s with the Boston Red Sox in 2015 ($217 million) and Clayton Kershaw’s with the Dodgers in 2014 ($215 million).

For the Dodgers, it is every other big deal for a loose agent. They have now surpassed out 5 contracts really worth at least $100 million since the beginning of the 2023-24 offseason—the equal number as the rest of the MLB mixed.

Snell, a two-time Cy Young Award winner, opted out of the very last season of his 12-month, $62 million deal with the San Francisco Giants on Nov. 1 to grow to be an unfastened agent for the second instantly offseason.

He joins the Giants’ archrival in Southern California and a rotation that is, on paper, loaded for 2025. As it stands, the Dodgers boast Snell, Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Tyler Glasnow, plus Dustin May, Tony Gonsolin, Bobby Miller, and Kershaw—have to re-sign with the club, as predicted—as options to round out the group. The Dodgers are also a few of the leading contenders to sign Japanese superstar right-hander Roki Sasaki, who’s expected to be posted this wintry weather.

Snell was the National League Cy Young Award winner with the San Diego Padres in 2023—five years after winning the same with the Tampa Bay Rays—but his dreams of getting a good market never became a reality. Misgivings about the lack of repurchase with the strikethrowing convinced him to offer to be somewhat below the six-year, $162 million deal another power lefty in Carlos Rodon had signed. He instead joined the Giants in late March, leaving most of the spring practice behind; that’s why he was in very poor form at the beginning of the 2024 year.

By the second half of June, Snell stood at 9.51 ERA and was going to the injured list for the second time with the groin issue. Upon his return, Snell pitched like he is among the best starting pitchers in baseball to end the season at 5-3 with a 3.12 ERA and 145 strikeout marks and 44 walk marks in 104 innings over 20 starts, and that is why it made a lot of sense for him to opt out of the playoffs. From 7th July till the end of September, the 31-year-old left-hand pitcher started 14 games with 80 2/3 innings pitched, 114 strikeouts, and 30 base on balls with an earned run average of 1.23.

He went on Aug. 2 and pitched a no-hitter against the Cincinnati Reds. In eight other cases, he pitched more than six innings and did not have more than two runs to his name. He suffered a strained left adductor that sidelined him from the team between April 19 and May 22 and a strained left groin that kept him on the sidelines between June 2 and July 9.

Snell catapulted himself to league-wide prominence with the Rays in 2018, topping all major league pitchers with 21 wins and ranking fifth in the AL with a 1.89 ERA. He was steady for the next four years, making contact with the ball at a low clip, but saw his ERA rise to 3.85 during that time. All in all, they have won 76 and lost 58 in 9 major league seasons with an average ERA of 3.19. There is no other pitcher in the majors in the last two seasons who had 250 IPs or more and an ERA lower than that of Snell: the Detroit Tigers’ Tarik Skubal.

Using next year’s values, Snell’s $36.4 million average salary would place him in the fifth among the most expensive active deals in the world behind Ohtani ($70 million), Philadelphia Phillies’ Zack Wheeler ($42 million), Yankees’ Aaron Judge ($40 million), and Texas Rangers’ Jacob deGrom ($37 million). On ESPN BET, the Dodgers are available at +400 to win the 2025 World Series. Since the Yankees’ triple three-peat from 1998-2000, there has not been a World Series winner who repeated the following year. That marked the longest streak without a repeat winner in MLB history.