It had to end the way it did. Everyone watching Game 6 of the World Series last night knew it.
By now, you’ve seen or read about how unmistakably dominant Blake Snell was for the Rays, essentially impeccable into the 6th inning. Through 5, he’d allowed 1 hit, struck out 9 and walked none. Not a single Dodger hitter looked particularly comfortable, even in the second trip through the batting order. He’d thrown just 69 pitches.
Then came a first-pitch pop-out to start the 6th, and the trend was continuing. But suddenly, when next-guy-up Austin Barnes hit a ho-hum single up the middle, plans had to change. The Dodgers were coming up for a 3rd time and Snell, no matter how silly he’d made them all look through two trips, could not be allowed to face them again. It was the will of the organization. The rest is history.
Very rarely does one single event win or lose a game. Baseball’s complex like that. But in this World Series, the Rays tried to exert their will, their own process, with such brute force as to try and render moot the most complex thing about this whole game: The players themselves. And Blake Snell shouldn’t be okay with that.
Maybe it’ll take a few days or a couple of weeks to decompress and think it through. And it doesn’t need to be done loudly or broadcast over Twitch. But once he’s searched his soul, Snell would be 100 percent justified to ask the Rays to trade him.
The Rays are a smart club. They often get credited, rightly or not, with innovation and ideation — four-man outfields, the “opener” e.g. — that stretches the limits of credulity for old-school fans and can even give new-school fans agita now and then. They’ve done so out of an artificial necessity, trying to squeeze every last drop of the players in their organization before the time comes to pay them legitimate money, which the team frequently prefers not to do.
This particular pitching strategy, though, had to fail. The use of openers and the tightening vice grip of starting pitcher leashes is accomplishing a bit of its stated intention: To limit opposing hitters’ additional looks at a pitcher’s stuff so as to, naturally, prevent runs. The numbers, such as they are, kind of bear this out, though 2020’s weirdness ended up yielding a lower opposing OPS for hitters in their 3rd trip up versus a starter than their 2nd. Go figure.
But no, the worst thing about this particular move was the absoluteness of it, the demonstration that, no matter how good or dominant or effortless you make a start look, in the biggest moments the team still values its organizational theories to get things done more than the players themselves. Nevermind that the process ended up yielding Nick Anderson in Snell’s place last night; Anderson, who truly is a dominant reliever when right, has not been totally right for some time and ended up immediately blowing the game. But he never should have been put in that position.
There is value to having a plan in place. It helps to have some guide of structure or guiding philosophy as you build team (if you’re a front office exec) or deploy said team (as a field manager). That plan, for pitchers anyway, used to be roughly: Starting pitcher for 6, three relievers with designated setup/closer roles for an inning apiece, ballgame. That philosophy was tweaked and polished to a fine shine by guys like Tony LaRussa and Bruce Bochy leaning on specialists and matchups later in games for shorter appearances.
But never has an organizational philosophy seemed to so boorishly proclaim itself to be more important than those tasked with actually carrying out that philosophy than Game 6 of this World Series. The Rays essentially declared that no player, no single performance, is above their law, and everyone who puts on the uniform must “buy in” and bend to their will. Debates about aesthetics aside (I certainly think it’s ugly more often than not), this strategy is also slowly working to not just blur the line between starter and reliever but smear it all over the wall.
You can find exceptions, sure. Charlie Morton got $30 million to be a true SP, but on a short two-year deal. Snell himself even has an extension in place, but in typical Rays fashion it buys out a year of free agency (2023) at a rate well below what Snell is likely to get ($16.6 million) given his current career trajectory as a Cy Young Award winner who will only be 31 following the ’23 season. You’d have to figure that he’d likely make less in free agency as a starter with a track record of only going ~4-5 innings than one who goes 6-plus, yeah?
But that’s too early to call. For now, in this moment, the Rays made their priorities crystal clear to their players last night: It doesn’t matter how good you are or what you accomplish, you are a cog in their machine beholden to the process, and that’s just the way it has to be.
Players, who have so little say about where they get to play in the prime years of their career, have limited options, and Snell is indeed under contract for 3 more seasons (with the post-2021 seasons still in limbo pending CBA talks). He is under-leveraged, and any trade would figure to be incredibly unlikely, requested or not.
But it’s the principle of the thing. Regardless of the eventual outcome, Snell sticking up for himself and his true value to the team and organization is just good process. You’d think the Rays would at least get that.
The Phrontiersman 