Letters to Sports: Rich get richer as Dodgers sign another star pitcher

It’s a brilliant idea, the eight-man starting rotation. Think about it: Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow, Clayton Kershaw, Walker Buehler, Tony Gonsolin, Dustin May and now Blake Snell.

Talk about a battery of arms, and no one needs to pitch more than 20 games from May through September. At six innings per game, that’s no more than 120 innings through the regular season, leaving the top five fresh for October, a rested bullpen, and Walker taking the ball when it matters most.

Peter Maradudin
Seattle

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In 1963, when the Dodgers swept the Yankees in the World Series, every player in the starting lineup, except for Yankees import Bill Skowron, was a homegrown Dodger. Now, 61 years later, only two players, Will Smith and Gavin Lux, fit that description. It is not that Ohtani is an agent of change, as Dylan Hernández suggests, it is the deep-pocketed ownership that has made the sport a tragic annual display of the haves and have-nots.

Bill Waxman
Simi Valley

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I know I’m dating myself, but I remember back in 1966 the two greatest pitchers were Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale. Both those star pitchers held out for contracts worth $100,000 each. Both pitchers eventually won that dispute with the Dodgers.

Fast-forward to today’s news. Blake Snell’s five-year, $182-million contract works out to approximately $36 million per season. Assuming Snell is able to reach his best years of 180 innings pitched, his income would work out to $200,000 per inning. In the best-case scenario Snell will earn in just one inning as much as Koufax and Drysdale earned in an entire season combined. Oh, and by the way, in 1965, both Koufax and Drysdale pitched more than 300 innings.

Fred Gober
Playa Vista