Blake Snell trade latest evidence Rays are bad for baseball

If you like player empowerment, the Yankees are the good guys and the Rays are the extremely bad guys. Just ask Blake Snell.

We don’t have to tell Yankees fans this — they already know. But if you’re rooting for the Rays as an “underdog,” you’re more specifically rooting for the enemy.

You’ve thrown your support behind a team that represents the destruction of the foundation of player worth in the game of baseball, piece by piece turning aces into pawns and pegs. You’re cheering for a team that’s decided every man is replaceable.

You’re rooting for the team that traded Blake Snell with three years of control left just because his pay was about to escalate. Escalate to a degree that they approved! This isn’t the arbitration process. It’s the later years of a contract extension they signed. But even the 2019 Rays that inked that deal weren’t frugal and evil enough for the 2020 edition, it seems.

In the dead of night, two months after ruining his World Series experience and treating him like a fading veteran instead of a top-10 pitcher in baseball, the Rays traded Snell to the West Coast and the San Diego Padres, one of very few teams that know how to have fun.

We’re so happy for him. And we’re so happy he’s gone.

The Rays seem hell-bent on taking as many unnecessary steps back from the precipice of a World Series title as possible. Charlie Morton’s $15 million annual salary, a necessary evil for most contenders, was deemed too high a price to pay to maintain their dangerous top three. And now Snell, set to make $10.5, $12.5 and $16 million these next three seasons, after only making a pro-rated version of $7 million last year, has been labeled an inefficiency, too. You know what else is inefficient? Sending Tyler Glasnow out by his lonesome and surrounding him with four relievers-turned-starters. But the profit’s more important than the playoffs, right?

It’s fair to admire the efficacy of Tampa’s plug-and-play strategy while admonishing its motivations. The Rays have a wealth of talent at the minor-league level, perhaps the best in the game. They have an endless parade of starters and relievers, each of whom can do a high-level job. But the Snell trade only serves as more evidence that, once that “wealth of talent” reaches the majors, no matter who they are, the clock is already ticking.

Never forget: This is the team that saw how much starters still make on the open market and chose to fill their rotation creatively with “openers” instead, quasi-relievers who would be much cheaper to retain and reproduce. Never mind someone like Ryan Yarbrough, who when he reaches free agency will have to explain to interested parties why he always comes in in the second or third inning and what exactly he’ll do for them. The Rays have depressed their own stars’ salaries by making them interchangeable.

The names were never important. That’s the reason this team has no fans. Only admirers of the system.

Say what you will about the Yankees’ economics. Perhaps they hardball their players or drag their feet when it comes time to pay the piper. But Gerrit Cole is making $324 million for his services, and the Rays actively looked to replace their ace when he reached the $10 million mark. It’s difficult to ascribe MLB players of their true worth, but any attempt to do so will look a lot more like the Yankees’ payroll than the Rays’.

Whether you’re a great admirer of frugality and this particular innovation or not, how can you justify this message at this moment? The Tampa Bay Rays were one ill-fated pitching decision away from Game 7 of the World Series.

Now, they’ve compounded that decision with an echo of itself. Why bother caring about sending your ace away too early when you’ve simply got another clone to replace him?

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