Blake Snell’s 5-year, $182 million contract with Los Angeles is just another reminder to be mad at your favorite team’s owner and not the Dodgers

Shocker (not really) – Blake Snell and the Los Angeles Dodgers are in agreement on a five-year, $182 million contract, marking the first nine-figure deal of the always-exciting MLB offseason. 

Blake Snell is a two-time Cy Young winner. It’s nice to see a team like the Dodgers add an arm like this since they have really been lacking star power in recent years. Blake Snell should 100% help this ragtag group of pitchers in their starting rotation:

Los Angeles Dodgers Projected 9-Man Starting Rotation in 2025:

1. Shohei Ohtani
2. Blake Snell
3. Yoshinobu Yamamoto
4. Tyler Glasnow
5. Clayton Kershaw
6. Roki Sasaki
7. Depth: Bobby Miller, Dustin May, Tony Gonsolin. 

Ah wait a second, the Dodgers are just spending a shit ton of money and building a superteam and no one is going to do anything to stop it. 

Side Note: Yes, I’m already giving the Dodgers Roki Sasaki. It’s inevitable. Sorry. 

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to know that the Dodgers have “deferred money” down to a science. $62 million of Blake Snell’s contract is deferred money, including his $52 million signing bonus. You can add that to the following players on deferred money that are already on the Dodgers payroll.

• Mookie Betts $115m deferred
• Freddie Freeman $57m deferred
• Will Smith $50m deferred
• Ohtani $680m deferred

Yep – that’s over $900 million in deferred contracts before Blake Snell joined the evil empire.

That’s a pretty easy way to get MLB fans excited for the 2025 season, right? 

Highly doubt it. It’s more likely that it’s an easy way to get millions of fans disinterested and unattached from baseball. Spare me the “everyone likes a villain” talk that all you casuals spew out on social media. If one more person tweets that I’ll literally jump off the Ben Franklin Bridge and take the Phillie Phanatic tied to cinderblocks with me. 

Stop being idiots. When one team is just levels above everyone else, it makes the overall Major League Baseball product worse and trust me, I don’t blame the Dodgers at all for doing it, but that doesn’t force any other organization to do the same thing, which is the real issue.

These “small market” teams with billionaire owners (the irony) are perfectly content with putting a bad product on the field while collecting as much money from fanbases that just want to watch good baseball in their city. 

Rob Manfred (lord help us) should probably step in and do something about it, right? 

I wouldn’t hold your breath. Honestly, there’s a case that Manfred should have stepped in when the Ohtani deal happened but since that happened, the flood gates are open.

Again, deferred money is a way for teams to pay players who are no longer on their roster a shit ton of money down the road. Owners who are willing to spend money and actually care about building a winning baseball team will always take full advantage of it. Smaller markets will always suffer because they aren’t held accountable to spend money. 

Nick Castellanos wants MLB owners to be held accountable for running losing franchises into the ground >>

Major League Baseball has no salary cap or salary floor so it is what it is and until there’s change in the MLB front office, it’s not going anywhere. 

Side Note: I know the “deferred money issue” actually dates back way longer than Ohtani, think the Dave Winfield contract that he signed with the Yankees. I know ball. But it’s become even more glaring in today’s game because of Mr. Gambling Addiction himself, Shohei Ohtani.

If I was commissioner, I would have a made a rule saying that only a generational talent like Ohtani should have been allowed to take that much deferred money to begin with but hey, it was clear as day that the MLB was going to let him do whatever regardless, such as, I don’t know, letting his interpreter take the fall for his gambling addiction. 

Color me surprised. So what can anyone do about it?

Simple answer is nothing but again, you could institute a salary cap to prevent teams that actually want to win baseball games from just buying World Series rings OR you could do what I have been preaching for years and institute a salary floor to force teams who are dog shit and have money hungry, billionaire owners to actually spend money to put a product on the field that could be a contender. 

The choice is pretty easy, right? 

As for Blake Snell. Do NOT let the Phillies figure shit out this winter because we all know you’re softer than baby shit in the postseason. See ya soon, bud. 

We’ll take it. Kyle Schwarber knocks in Matt Vierling.

Blake Snell throws 37 pitches in the 2nd inning. Phillies lead 4-0🔔#RedOctober | #RingTheBell pic.twitter.com/b2HM50opTm

— The Liberty Line (@LibertyLinePHL) October 19, 2022

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