The Dodgers are trusting a $400 million season to Blake Snell’s groin, and they’re doing it in a game they can’t afford to lose.
Blake Snell’s groin has thrown three times in two and a half weeks, which is the entire body of evidence the Dodgers have to go on for Game 3. He looked every bit like the ace this roster was built around right after returning from May elbow surgery, posting a 1.13 ERA and going 4-0 across eight regular-season starts that made the whole comeback look seamless. Then the groin tightness showed up in mid-September, and the version of Snell taking the mound for tonight’s start is one nobody has actually seen under real pressure since. That’s the arm starting Game 3 with the Dodgers down 0-2 in the NLCS, against a Brewers team one win away from the pennant.
On the other side of this is Robert Gasser, 27 years old, who pitched his way into the assignment with a 1.67 ERA over his final six regular-season outings and then ground through four innings against the Padres in the NLDS, one run allowed, three strikeouts. Robert Gasser is making his second career playoff start tonight, in Game 3, against a lineup that’s supposed to make a 27-year-old’s first full October feel impossible. Funny enough, he’s gotten rocked by this exact lineup before, a 5.91 ERA over two regular-season starts against the Dodgers, with the Brewers losing both of those games anyway, which tells you his track record isn’t actually the reason tonight should scare anyone in Dodger blue.
I’m a Yankees fan with zero rooting interest in this series whatsoever, and even I can’t stop checking the lineup card like it owes me money. That’s how shaky this whole setup feels from the outside looking in.
The actual math is simple: this is a roster that cleared $430 million in luxury-tax payroll this year, built specifically so a night like this never has to hinge on one man’s groin. Shohei Ohtani is still in the lineup despite a quiet series by his own standards, which tells you exactly how thin the margin around Snell has gotten. A $400 million payroll shouldn’t need a hobbled starter to survive a must-win NLCS game, and yet here we are. The team posted the pregame hype reel anyway, because that’s what you do the night before a possible elimination:
https://twitter.com/Dodgers/status/2110212930256212420
Confidence is free. Innings out of a bad groin are not.
To be fair, Snell has done exactly this before. Last year’s NLCS against this same Brewers team, he threw eight shutout innings on one hit, zero walks and ten strikeouts, the type of start that makes an injury report look irrelevant. Dave Roberts also insisted after the rocky NLDS outing that the groin had nothing to do with it, that Snell was simply fighting his own delivery all night, which means health and stuff are two separate questions heading into tonight.
Maybe.
Or maybe the Dodgers are about to find out live, on FS1, with a $400 million season attached.
