11/29/20

ballnine - SNELL THAT SNELL

 



Time to talk turkey.

That’s my way of getting into trade talk on Thanksgiving you can talk about around the table. Will the Rays trade former Cy Young winner Blake Snell?

If the return haul is right, I definitely see the Rays making this trade and here’s a bunch of reasons why.

First of all the Rays are the Rays. They can’t do business like the other teams in the AL East. They have to be so creative that it hurts sometimes.

Secondly, Snell would bring back high level inexpensive talent. The Rays are cheap. And this plays into their central philosophy. Mix the talent around the diamond.

Thirdly, and this gets to the heart of it all, the human condition. Never underestimate ego when it comes to organizations and that means front office ego and ownership ego, not players’ ego.

Snell would be a constant reminder to the Rays’ of their biggest failure as a franchise every time he pitches with a Rays jersey on his back. The decision to remove him was one of the worst decisions ever made in World Series history and you can tell that this hurts the Rays organization down deep the way they have tried to spin it as this is the way the Rays always do business.

This was an organizational decision put into practice by manager Kevin Cash, a decision based on what had occurred in the past instead of what was happening right then and there in the present, right in front of Cash and the cloistered front office and ownership group.

Cash jettisoned Snell as he was pitching a shutout in the sixth inning of Game 6 against the Dodgers with a 1-0 lead, a manageable pitch count and a high strikeout count after the lefty allowed a simple one-out single to Austin Barnes.

Captain Hook could not wait to race out of the dugout to get Snell out of the game and soon the World Series was kaput because he went to an overworked bullpen that had nothing left and was actually spent at the end of the ALCS because of the at-bats the Astros hitters were putting on the Rays relief pitchers in those seven games.

Explain it away any way you want, but that is exactly what happened.

This was an organizational decision put into practice by manager Kevin Cash, a decision based on what had occurred in the past instead of what was happening right then and there in the present, right in front of Cash and the cloistered front office and ownership group.

Cash jettisoned Snell as he was pitching a shutout in the sixth inning of Game 6 against the Dodgers with a 1-0 lead, a manageable pitch count and a high strikeout count after the lefty allowed a simple one-out single to Austin Barnes.

Captain Hook could not wait to race out of the dugout to get Snell out of the game and soon the World Series was kaput because he went to an overworked bullpen that had nothing left and was actually spent at the end of the ALCS because of the at-bats the Astros hitters were putting on the Rays relief pitchers in those seven games.

Explain it away any way you want, but that is exactly what happened.

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