Yankees Interested In Blake Snell

The Yankees are interested in left-hander Blake Snell, reports Jon Heyman of The New York Post. That meshes with reporting from Andy Martino of SNY, who says the club is “planning an active January” as it hopes to add to its pitching staff before Spring Training. Martino adds that Snell has privately expressed an interest in the Yankees, though also adds they are not the only club in his market.

The Yankees were heavily pursuing Yoshinobu Yamamoto, highlighting their desire to add to their rotation. Previous reports from Mark Feinsand of MLB.com and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic suggested that, if the Yanks missed on Yamamoto, they might pivot to build a super bullpen instead of focusing on the rotation. Now that Yamamoto has signed with the Dodgers, the Yankees are exploring their other options and it seems they haven’t totally abandoned the idea of a significant rotation addition. They have had ongoing interest in bringing back Jordan Montgomery and now Snell appears to be on the table as well.

If they were to sign Snell, they would have a rotation fronted by the two reigning Cy Young winners. Snell just took home the National League hardware for his excellent season with the Padres while Gerrit Cole got the American League trophy. Despite that, the pitchers are actually quite different. While Cole has been the poster boy for stability and reliability, Snell’s career has been more erratic.

He finished 2023 with 180 innings pitched for the Friars, registering a 2.25 ERA in that time. He struck out 31.5% of batters faced and kept 44.4% of batted balls on the ground but also gave out walks at a 13.3% clip. That got him second career Cy Young, the first coming with the Rays in 2018 when he had a 1.89 ERA. But the four seasons in between those two elite campaigns were more shaky. His ERA finished 4.20 or higher twice and he didn’t reach 130 innings in any of them, dealing with various injuries.

Those concerns aside, Snell is clearly one of the best pitchers in the league when things are going well and he has received interest from the Giants, Angels, Mets and Red Sox. The Yankees slotting him next to Cole would give the club an excellent one-two punch. Carlos Rodón and Nestor Cortes are each coming off disappointing injury-marred seasons but have been excellent in the past. If they are able to bounce back this year, and the club signs Snell, then they would be looking at arguably the best front four in the league. The depth was thinned out in the Juan Soto deal, with four pitchers going to San Diego, but the Yanks still have Clarke Schmidt, Clayton Beeter, Yoendrys Gómez, Luis Gil and Will Warren as options for the back end.

At the start of the offseason, MLBTR predicted Snell to land a seven-year deal worth $200MM, around $28.6MM per year. The Yankees haven’t been shy about handing out huge deals for starting pitchers in recent years, as they gave Cole $324MM, Rodon $162MM and reportedly offered Yamamoto $300MM over 10 years.

Per Roster Resource, the club currently has a payroll of $279MM and a competitive balance tax figure of $290MM. The Yanks are set to pay the luxury tax for a third straight year, meaning they have a base tax rate of 50% for any spending beyond the lowest threshold of $237MM. As the brackets go up in $20MM increments, their tax rates jump to 62%, 95% and 110%. They are already well beyond the third line and just $7MM away from the highest tier. That means that signing Snell to a salary in the $25-30MM range would actually cost them around twice as much when factoring in the taxes.

Last year, the club was reluctant to pass the final tier but it feels as though they are more willing to blow past it this year, given that they are so close to it and still actively pursuing upgrades. Even if they eventually turn away from a rotation addition and turn instead to relievers like Jordan Hicks or Robert Stephenson, they would still find themselves on the other side of the border.