Rays at it again with ace Snell
Tampa has history of trading top players
Every year around this time, it’s easy to pen a sports column about what the Red Sox should be thankful for.
Sometimes it’s fun to play general manager and make the Red Sox a Black Friday shopping list to assist in their off-season planning.
This year, we’re taking a pause to spend our Black Friday thinking about the Tampa Bay Rays, the frustrating ways in which they’re changing the landscape in Major League Baseball and a lingering hope that maybe, one day soon perhaps, the Rays will end up on a Black Friday shopping list for a worthy investor interested in taking the team to a legitimate baseball market.
How’s this for a doorbuster deal? Rays principal owner Stu Sternberg purchased a 48% share in the club for $65 million in 2004. A year later, he and an investment group took over controlling interest. By that math, the club was valued just north of $130 million. On Forbes’ latest MLB valuations, the Rays were estimated to be worth more than $1 billion, and with more operating income than the Mets, among other clubs.
And yet every time the Rays have a quality player in the organization, they can’t even make it through the player’s first professional contract, almost always a team-friendly deal (the only kind the Rays actually sign) before trading him away for cheaper, younger players.
They did it with James Shields, David Price and Chris Archer. They did it with Evan Longoria, And now they’re reportedly gauging interest in former Cy Young winner Blake Snell, the ace of the staff who was notoriously removed from the final World Series game this year after throwing just 73 pitches in an overpowering performance.
Here’s an excerpt from MLB.com’s report: “A source noted that Tampa Bay is not actively shopping Snell, who has three years and $39 million remaining on his five-year, $50 million extension, but given the financial losses the Rays endured during the pandemic-impacted 2020 season, trading the 27-year-old represents the club’s best chance to create some much-needed flexibility.”
Imagine trading your best player at just 28 years old when he’s due only a fraction of what he’s worth. Over the next three years, Snell will make just $39 million. He’s arguably worth that in a single season on a team that would actually deploy him and let him eat innings the way an ace is capable of.
Imagine being a Rays fan and growing to love these players, only to know that as soon as they approach 30, they’re on their way out the door.
Even for the majority of the baseball fans out there who don’t care about the Rays, the fact that they’re constantly stripping away the best players from their roster has become dangerously bad for the game.
Why? Because it works. That’s the worst part about this. It’s hard to argue any of the trades the Rays made to unload their AllStar players were bad ones. Longoria has just a .726 OPS in San Francisco after posting an .823 OPS over a decade in Tampa, where he became the most valuable player in the franchise’s short history.
Archer had a 3.69 ERA in Tampa; a 4.92 ERA since getting traded to Pittsburgh.
Price pitched well in short stints in Detroit and Toronto after getting traded out of the Florida deadlands, but eventually signed the biggest free agent contract for a starting pitcher in MLB history and hardly made it worth the Red Sox’ while.
Shields was the only one to continue his dominance after departure.
In turn, the Rays netted Wil Myers, Jake Odorizzi, Tyler Glasnow, Austin Meadows and Willy Adames, among other impact players who have contributed to the team’s success in recent years.
And then they eventually flipped Myers and Odorizzi, again for younger players.
The cycle continues.
To make matters worse this week, the Rays lost one of their other dominant starters, Charlie Morton, to free agency after they declined his one-year, $15-million option for 2021.
Morton signed in Atlanta. The contract? One year, $15 million.
The Rays don’t want their best players, even when they’re worth the money they’re owed, or worth more than the money they’re owed.
It might be good for business, but it’s terrible for the game and its fans, who instead of getting treated to a historic World Series performance by Snell, could be forced to watch another group of openers and relievers handle the workload next time the Rays make a run. And then the league copies it. Next thing you know, the Red Sox have become a team that trades Mookie Betts and sets records for the most starting pitchers (ahem, openers) in franchise history while posting their worst winning percentage since 1965.