Tampa Bay Rays: Why Blake Snell is right to refuse reduced pay in 2020

Backing Blake

He didn’t hide behind the union. He told fans straight up what his thoughts were. They are fair. Yes, when he cut a Scott Steiner-Esque promo about the math involved in his salary, some rolled their eyes and said: “what about normal people who don’t make millions!”

Guess what? Most major leaguers do not make millions of dollars. Here’s a great piece from Beyond the Box Score on the salaries of the 1,200 MLBPA members (40-man rosters x 30 teams + 67 IL at the time). They concluded that 31.4 percent of the union members were due to earn at least a million dollars in 2020. This was prior to the suspension of play.

There are far more players who earn less than a million dollars with small windows to do so than there are millionaires.

The Tampa Bay Rays only have two players that earn over $10 million a year. Charlie Morton was set to earn $15 million for the second-straight year and Kevin Kiermaier was due $10.17 million. After Snell’s $7.6 million the next highest-paid player is Mike Zunino at $4.5 million.

I applaud Blake Snell for his boldness. His confidence to tell fans how he really feels. Yes, there is a heightened risk. Yes, the league is trying to set a precedent for a revenue split. He didn’t have to share his real thoughts with us and he did. I appreciate that.

The players are not quick to accept that the teams will be operating at a loss considering the significant television deals. For example, the Rays’ TV deal is set to double this season over last. Check out this tweet from Jon Heyman quoting Scott Boras:

On the next slide, we’ll dive into whether or not he’s a Spoiled Snell or address the questions about whether or not these guys love the game.