You can indulge in rumor season in November.
All we have is this. The closer we get to the Winter Meetings in early December, the more activity there is. Right now, the only thing we have is potential.
It’s no secret that the Phillies are looking for a starting pitcher. Although Dave Dombrowski, the president of baseball operations, stated that they would rather keep Aaron Nola than explore other options, not everything a baseball executive says during this time of year should be believed.
They’ll be connected to additional elite pitchers. That’s the way things are. According to MLB Network’s Jon Morosi, the Phillies are considering Sonny Gray. The Phillies’ interest in Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Jordan Montgomery, Eduardo Rodriguez, Marcus Stroman, and other players shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Blake Snell was one name that was purposefully omitted. The reason for this is that a well-known national baseball writer is promoting the idea that the Phillies favor Snell over Nola.
That’s the one I’m shaking my head at.
Bob Nightengale of USA Today has repeatedly connected Snell to the Phillies. Many general managers believe Snell will sign a deal with the Phillies, according to a report from Nightengale on Sunday. The Phillies are “favorites” to sign Snell, he wrote yesterday.
It would be enough to say that the Phillies are interested in Snell, but it’s very unlikely that they see him as their best option to close a gap at the top of the rotation.
Of Nola, Snell, Yamamoto, and Montgomery, the top four, Snell is the least suitable for the Phillies.
Later this week, Snell, 30, is most likely to receive his second Cy Young Award. Pitching for the Padres to a 2.25 ERA in 32 starts, he was outstanding in 2023.
Snell had the highest walks per nine innings among eligible starters at 4.95, but he also finished second only to Spencer Strider in strikeouts per nine innings at 11.70. At 3.70, Taijuan Walker had the sixth-highest walks-per-nine at the end.
His success in 2023 can best be explained by his superiority when wearing runners on. Opposing hitters batted.174 with a.528 OPS when there were men on base. The numbers drop to.152 with a.470 OPS when there are runners in scoring position. In 2023, with runners on base, batters batted.289 with an.816 OPS against Nola. Benefit, Snell.
The best thing about Snell is that he can get both lefties and righties out. The idea that some managers are still using platoons against Snell is perplexing. In 2023, righties performed worse against Snell (.176/.284/.281) than lefties (.204/.339/.311).
Aces execute pitches in tight spots and strike out batters on both sides of the plate, but Snell isn’t particularly remarkable in any other way.
The knock on Snell is his inability to rack up an innings total on par with some of the other top pitchers in the game. Snell will likely win the Cy Young, but 23 pitchers threw more innings over the course of the season than Snell.
The two other NL finalists, Logan Webb and Zac Gallen, threw at least 210 innings in 2023. Webb recorded 108 more outs than Snell. Gallen recorded 90 more outs than Snell.
When outsiders compare seasons between the best starting pitchers in the sport, they’ll usually start with ERA and have the innings total be a secondary measurement of success. Maybe it’s time to reverse that thinking and start with innings pitched and use ERA as a baseline. If you throw 220 innings, but have a 4.50 ERA, you’re probably not good enough to win the Cy Young. But if you’re at 220 innings with a 3.50 ERA, you’re a much better candidate than the guy with 170 innings and a 2.10 ERA.
It’s a matter of value. If you’re skeptical, consider this. In his likely second Cy Young Award season, Snell finished 2023 with 4.1 FanGraphs wins above replacement or fWAR. Nola, in the worst season of his career, finished 2023 with 3.9 fWAR.
With the prevalence of strict reliever usage patters, roster limits on pitchers and minor league option limits, durable starters are more important than ever. Snell reached 180 innings in 2023, a relatively good number in today’s game. The issue is that he has eclipsed an innings total above 130 innings twice in his career. Both years were Cy Young campaigns.
His agent Scott Boras will tout the lack of mileage on Snell’s left arm. Maybe one team will convince themselves that they can get more out of Snell and pay over $200 million for his services.
It would be shocking if that team ended up being the Phillies, despite what the rumors say.
They have benefited from having two of baseball’s best workhorses at the top of the rotation for many years.
Nola has thrown 1,422 innings for the Phillies in the last nine years, so it’s reasonable to wonder if he can stay that way for another six or seven. Nevertheless, any team that signs him can be reasonably certain that they are getting a pitcher who will start nearly every game for the next two or three years.
Dave Dombrowski has put four things above all else during his time with the Phillies. Star position player talent ranks first, high end velocity/stuff in the bullpen ranks second, youth and athleticism infusion ranks third, and innings certainty ranks fourth, along with a potent 1-2 out of the rotation.
The Phillies went into last year’s offseason looking for a middle-of-the-rotation arm that had a better track record of durability than Zach Eflin. They paid much more than expected at four years, $72 million for Walker, but that signaled to the industry just how much the Phillies valued having a pitcher who could eat innings. Despite Walker’s up-and-down year, he did throw 172 2/3 innings and finish with 2.5 fWAR in 2023.
The Phillies traded one of their top prospects, Hao-Yu Lee, for Michael Lorenzen at this year’s trade deadline, even though they had five starters in the rotation. This allowed the team to switch to a six-man rotation and have an extra arm in case an injury occurred. After the no-hitter, he didn’t pitch well, but he did serve a purpose when Ranger Suárez missed time at the end of the season due to a hamstring injury.
The Phillies will be interested in Snell and will investigate him further, but it’s difficult to see them choosing Snell over other options given everything mentioned above and the implications of signing Snell for the luxury tax.
For the 2025 signing period, the Phillies will have to give up a second and fifth-round pick as well as one million dollars in international bonus pool money (roughly one-fifth of the team’s total pool) because Snell has a qualifying offer attached to him and the Phillies will pay the luxury tax in 2023. The Phillies will receive a draft pick after the fourth round if they sign Snell and let Nola walk, negating the need to give up the team’s fifth-round pick.
Yamamoto and Montgomery do not have qualifying offers attached. It’s a steep price to pay and considering the Phillies surrendered seven draft picks and $3.5 million in international bonus pool money over the last six years to sign qualified free agents, it may be wise to take a break this year.
Snell is also projected to earn more in free agency than Nola and Montgomery. Jon Heyman of the New York Post floated a number around $250 million.
Inflation in the free agent starting pitching market is real, but that much money for a pitcher that doesn’t have a track record of being a workhorse is insane.
Snell has thrown at least seven innings in 23 career starts. Roy Halladay threw at least seven innings 28 times for the Phillies in 2010.
The bar for what an ace is has dropped considerably over the past decade. Maybe it’s for the better that teams expect less out of their top starters. There is a cost to consistently throwing over 200 innings for years at a time. Halladay’s struggles with pain and addiction is proof that baseball should not revert to its past ways of handling pitchers.
However, a balance that pleases both spectators and athletes can be found, as the sport appears to have discovered with the ace pitcher, who pitches roughly 200 innings in their best seasons and averages about 170 innings.
In this day and age, that is the bar that an ace pitcher must meet, and Snell has consistently fallen short of it. However, it appears that he will be compensated similarly to a pitcher who meets the standard.
Perhaps I’ll be gravely mistaken and Snell ends up becoming the next Randy Johnson. What counts is what Dombrowski—the executive who once dealt Johnson—believes is the proper course of action.
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