Tanner Scott and the Dodgers in agreement on a four year contract
Not even 48 hours after acquiring Roki Sasaki, making the best starting rotation in baseball even better, the Dodgers locked down one of the best closers in baseball - Tanner Scott. The deal is worth $72M over four years. With this move, Los Angeles continues their wild offseason following their second World Series championship in five years. It’s pretty simple - the Dodgers do not care that you think they are ruining baseball. Until something drastic changes, the Dodgers are going to continue to use their resources to improve their team. Following their championship in the shortened 2020 season, they won 100 games in three straight years, but only one playoff series victory to show for it. The Dodgers are going to do everything in their ability to not let that happen again, and they simply don’t care about the optics of it. The Dodgers needed a real closer, so they went out and got one. With that being said, what exactly are they getting with Tanner Scott?
Scott is entering his age 31 season and is coming off of two very solid campaigns of which he spent with both the Marlins and Padres. He has delivered back to back seasons with 70+ innings, logging the 4th most innings out of relief among all relievers since the start of 2023. In 2024, he finished 6th among qualified relievers in ERA (1.75) and 14th in fWAR (1.6). Since the start of 2023, he leads all relievers in fWAR (4.5), and ranks within the top five in ERA (2.04) and FIP (2.53).
I recently wrote about my top five bullpens in the game of baseball and ranked the Dodgers 2nd just behind the Cleveland Guardians. The only thing that left them out of the top spot was the fact that they did not have a solidified closer. Evan Phillips closed 18 games for L.A. but it was still really a “closer by committee” bullpen. Adding Tanner Scott is essentially the final piece to the puzzle for this already elite bullpen. Scott tossed 29 high leverage innings in 2024, the 3rd most in baseball. Over those 29 frames, batters hit just .175 with a .584 OPS while striking out 30.1% of the time. He has the resume to be the Dodgers new full-time closer.
Scott finds a lot of success through the strikeout, but really has made his money in limiting hard contact. 2024 was a career low for him in both average EV allowed (84.3) and hardhit% (27.2), both of which were top three among qualified relievers. He gets it done with a simple two-pitch mix consisting of just a 4-seam fastball and a slider. With a run value of 17, his fastball was the 6th most valuable fastball among all pitchers and yielded the lowest BAA (.134), SLG (.179), xSLG (.252), and hardhit% (28.9), while his xBA (.184), xwOBA (.270), and whiff% (28.9) ranked top ten.
For four years at $72M, this does seem like a steep price, considering Jeff Hoffman received three years at $33M with roughly the same track record of success as Scott. The Dodgers were going to have to dish out this amount of money regardless as it was reported that the Cubs had a four year offer worth $66M on the table for him. As for the Padres, their bullpen will take a hit, but still projects as one of the better bullpens in baseball heading into 2025 with Robert Suarez and Jason Adam at the back end.
