It always made sense.

The Los Angeles Dodgers brass has been intrigued by Blake Snell since president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman traded away one of the Tampa Bay Rays’ 10 first-round picks in the 2011 MLB Draft, and has tried to acquire him several times over the past few years to add seasons as he traveled the rest of the NL West. The Dodgers tried to put pressure on him late last winter, after their stellar offseason had already passed the billion-dollar mark. They expressed interest in him at the trade deadline, even though poaching him from the San Francisco Giants would have caused excitement among fans of the historic rival.

This time they landed him. The Dodgers have agreed to terms with the two-time Cy Young winner on a five-year contract worth $182 million, league sources confirmed The athlete on Tuesday evening. It includes “some” deferred money and there are no opt-outs, a league source said.

Snell’s deal includes a $52 million signing bonus, a league source confirmed. The signing bonus essentially ensures that the current value of the deal is still high despite the postponements. So while the average annual value is $36.4 million, the number for the Dodgers’ competitive accounting tax calculation is expected to be around $32 million to $33 million.

The Dodgers were expected to be early players on the pitching market this offseason. Their run to the World Series last October came despite an expensive rotation that was wiped out by injury until the postseason. The return of Shohei Ohtani after a second major elbow ligament reconstruction added an option, but also forces the Dodgers to have to run a six-man rotation to accommodate him and the regular roster of $325 million player Yoshinobu Yamamoto to accommodate.

The wealth that the Japanese baseball and off-field business market brought allowed the Dodgers to once again play in the deepest waters of free agency and put Los Angeles at the forefront of a pitching-rich market led by Snell, Corbin Burnes and Max Fried.

Blake Snell joins a rotation that also includes Tyler Glasnow, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and a returning Shohei Ohtani. (Jason Mowry/Getty Images)

Burnes would have been a good fit for the Dodgers, as the 2021 NL Cy Young winner has developed into one of the sport’s most consistent top starters. He has logged at least 190 innings in every season since his Cy Young-winning campaign was projected for a winner due to low innings totals. Whatever gradual decline the 30-year-old has experienced in quality product or strikeout rate, it has been negated by consistent production. By the end of the winter, Burnes — who, like Snell, is a client of Scott Boras — could well receive the richest pitching contract of this offseason.

Fried and the Dodgers also make sense. The left-hander is known to have grown up in the area. Most importantly, he has shown a knack for consistent, elite performance without elite swing-and-miss numbers in Atlanta for years. Similar to the Dodgers’ brief pursuit of Aaron Nola last winter, he may be a guy who could provide volume and benefit from the club’s pitching development. Like Burnes, he is also only 30, a year younger than Snell but perhaps more willing to have more years and more money at his disposal.

However, neither seemed to fit as well with the Dodgers as Snell. He was a better fit with the Dodgers than the Boston Red Sox, the other team he met early in his second go-round in free agency The Athletics Ken Rosenthal first reported. The same goes for the Baltimore Orioles and New York Yankees, two other teams reportedly linked to Snell.

The Dodgers appreciate Snell’s outstanding performance. The left-hander boasts some of the most dominant skills of any starter in baseball – things that didn’t appear to have diminished a year ago, when all three of his off-speed offerings (curveball, changeup, slider) had swing-and-miss hits in excess of 40 Percent. All of that came with a fastball that’s still in the mid-90s. Valuing the top-end “band” of results is what the Dodgers have long emphasized in acquiring pitches, whether in pursuit of Snell’s former teammate Tyler Glasnow last offseason or in their hope to land the Japanese phenom To sign Roki Sasaki whenever he is deployed.

Snell offers the highest level of performance that a starting pitcher has shown in some of the last two seasons. Two years ago, with the San Diego Padres, Snell was hit hard for six runs against the Red Sox, dropping his record to 1-6 and increasing his ERA to 5.40. He had a 1.20 ERA in his next 23 starts, going at least six innings in 17 of them, and finished his season with a Cy Young Award. A year ago, he signed late with San Francisco and had a 9.51 ERA when he went on the injured list in June – only to have a 1.23 ERA in the 14 starts after his return, a stretch that also included a No-hitter included.

The Dodgers are betting on that, just as they did when they gave Yamamoto the richest pitching contract ever and gave Glasnow five years and $136.5 million, even though the right-hander never made more than 20 starts in a season. In a rotation that revolves around upside while acknowledging the serious questions surrounding Ohtani, Dustin May and Tony Gonsolin, all of whom are returning from major elbow surgeries, Snell gives Los Angeles another top-end option.

With Bobby Miller coming off a disastrous season and two-thirds of his World Series players still on the open market in Jack Flaherty and Walker Buehler, Snell gives the Dodgers some buzz. If everything works out, the Dodgers will have a well-positioned and healthy team for October. If a spate of injuries derail the Dodgers’ best-laid plans, they’ll have another elite option at their disposal.

And there’s still a lot to do this winter – the Dodgers’ focus is still on the corner outfield and a possible reunion with Teoscar Hernández to restock some of their title-winning talent (like Kiké Hernández, Buehler, Flaherty and Blake Treinen) – it is a huge box that will be checked before Thanksgiving.

(Photo: John Hefti / USA Today)