Blake Snell has never sounded like a pitcher eager to fit neatly into anybody else’s box, and the Dodgers left-hander made that plain again when he talked about his own future in baseball.
Speaking with the California Post's Dylan Hernandez earlier this month, Snell addressed the way he feels he’s perceived and offered a glimpse into how he thinks about the game - and how much longer he wants to stay in it.
“I just wish people would watch me pitch and then understand the work that I put into being a good pitcher, great pitcher, is a lot more than they’ve ever experienced or give me credit for,” Snell said. “Because I watch the game, I understand the hitters.
I understand who they are right now in the present. I understand who they are as a hitter.”
Snell’s comments were one part of a wider Dodgers roundup that also tied the club to another big name from Japan. This time, the target is third baseman Teruaki Sato.
Los Angeles was recently listed as one of the top landing spots for Sato, who is coming off a huge season at the plate in Nippon Professional Baseball. The 27-year-old hit .306 with 39 home runs and posted a .991 OPS.
The price to get him won’t be modest, though. Between posting fees and the cut his soon-to-be former team, the Hanshin Tigers, would receive from his first MLB contract - and possibly beyond - the bill figures to be steep.
There’s also the fit on the current roster to consider. Max Muncy is still the Dodgers’ third baseman, so if Sato landed in Los Angeles, a move to the outfield would be one possible path.
Andrew Friedman also addressed another major Dodgers question: Shohei Ohtani’s future as a two-way player.
Ohtani, the four-time MVP, was shut down from pitching in July and did not return to the mound for the rest of the season. Friedman said the organization now has to sort through something that doesn’t come with a playbook, because Ohtani’s level of two-way talent is unlike anything the game has seen in more than a century.
“This is unprecedented, what he’s doing,” Friedman said. “So obviously for us it’s unprecedented.
We don’t have any experience to draw from. We can’t go look at how other situations have played out to try to learn from the good and the bad.
We have to all just figure it out together."
The rest of the Dodgers update also pointed to the team’s pending free agents and their market values, keeping the offseason focus squarely on what comes next for a roster that still has plenty of moving parts.
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