Snell opened up to The Athletic’s Andrew Baggarly about his thoughts on free agency, both past and future.
Good morning, baseball fans!
Earlier this week, Andrew Baggarly of The Athletic wrote a piece that featured an interview with San Francisco Giants starting pitcher Blake Snell that included his perspective on free agency; both upcoming and the controversial period that preceded this season.
The hook of the article was the difference between Snell’s perspective of last offseason and the perspective of his fellow free agent Jordan Montgomery (now with the Arizona Diamondbacks). Both were late free agency signings and clients of mega-agent Scott Boras. Montgomery seems to blame Boras for the outcome of his free agency, having since switched representation. Whereas Snell blames the market and expresses continued faith in Boras.
Snell is, almost certainly, going to choose to opt out and explore the market once again this offseason, no matter what happens. So it’s not surprising that he disagrees with Montgomery’s perspective.
Also notable is the stark contrast in their 2024 seasons, with Montgomery struggling with the Diamondbacks, and Snell having a resurgent second half with the Giants. It’s not hard to see why Montgomery might be more upset about a perception of missed opportunities for a better contract, coming off of a strong, World Series championship season.
Snell, too, expresses displeasure with the way the offseason played out, saying:
“It sucks because that was … our year to get our deals that we worked so hard to get. But ultimately the market’s the market. You can’t control it.”
That stood out to me because he’s absolutely right. And it sucks.
The game keeps changing to try to edge all but the tippety-top echelon of players out of their big paydays. For every nine-figure blockbuster deal, there’s 50 guys getting nickle-and-dimed over every stat in arbitration. For every decade-long contract, there’s another 20 veteran players still able to contribute who are going unsigned.
With Snell coming off of his second career Cy Young Award winning season, he absolutely should have been signed before the last minute. And at the age of 31, it’s absolutely not absurd for him to have expected a high dollar, multi-year deal.
He might be willing to attribute it to a bad market, but personally I think we’ve been seeing the owners trending low on average for a while now. I’ll leave it at that.
Anyway, it’s a good interview and an interesting read, including a brief anecdote about him hosting his teammates for a dinner party and showing them him sneaker collection, which is said to rival that of former Giant Brandon Crawford.
What time do the Giants play today?
The Giants continue their three-game road series against the Milwaukee Brewers tonight at 5:10 p.m. PT.