In short: NBA player Tony Snell owned when nobody picked him up, denying him from hitting premium pension benefits; MLB player Blake Snell owned because nobody wants to sign him, among other notable free agents, despite being the reigning NL Cy Young winner
Man, there’s few things that are amusing to me than hearing stories about professional athletes who get owned, financially. A bunch of out-of-touch grown-ass man-babies who didn’t learn how to manage their finances or don’t seem to realize the privileges they have getting paid egregious amounts of money for being exceptionally good at playing children’s intramural sports.
And I love how the media feeds us these stories as if we should feel bad for these guys, as if we the regular people will be able to relate and agree that they’re getting screwed or something, by some evil employers and/or corporations. Nuh-uh, doesn’t work that way, and I don’t think I’ll ever feel bad for any professional athlete not getting the six or seven figures-plus that they think they deserve, while short of me finding the recipe for instant money, I, or anyone like me, will never see seven figures at any point in our lives.
So let’s start with Tony Snell, the fringe basketball player, whom we’re supposed to feel bad for because no team in the NBA wanted to pick him up, and give him a 10th year of service, which would qualify him and his entire family for “premium” pension, which encapsulates lifetime medical for him, as well as his spouse and children. It’s also pointed out how his sons are both on the spectrum, and made to sound like it’s a tragedy that no NBA team, especially a curated list of teams that had an available roster spot, would pick him up and let him ride the bench so that he could get full medical for his family.
Last time I checked, autism is not cancer, nor is something that is life-threatening, and isn’t something that only the offspring of professional athletes are subject to. Millions of people across the planet are on the spectrum or deal with autism and they most certainly don’t have the safety net of insurance to help out with some of the nuisances that living with autism can cause, and Tony Snell having to deal with kids with autism doesn’t make him a tragedy, it just makes him like millions of other parents who have kids with it as well.
Furthermore, according to Spotrac, Tony Snell has made $52 million dollars in his career. For playing basketball. And that doesn’t include any endorsements or sponsorship dollars he might’ve made at various points in his career. Even assuming that half of that was hoovered up by Uncle Sam, he’s still probably cleared $26M in his lifetime. Most Americans won’t even see $1M in their lifetimes, and we’re supposed to feel bad that someone who’s cleared probably $26M isn’t going to get free healthcare from the NBA? As the kids say, (get) the fuck out of here.
I also love the part where other like-minded snarks like me pointed out his wife’s lavish spending habits, showing where most likely the vast majority of his $26M+ fortune has gone throughout the last nine years, and why it’s likely that he’s reliant on premium healthcare in order to get some care for his kids. I think it’s obvious where the problem really lies, and it’s not the cost of healthcare, it’s not awareness for autism, and it’s not the NBA’s current system that only allows the premium healthcare to those who can clear ten years of service.
Now on to Blake Snell, the pitcher, freshly removed from winning the NL Cy Young, which makes him one of the only pitchers in history to have won both an NL and an AL Cy Young, is still unemployed, even after Spring Training camps have opened across MLB.
The funny thing is that it’s not that he’s unwillingly unemployed, as early in the off-season, the Yankees reportedly made an offer to Balakey, somewhere in the neighborhood of five to six years, and $150-165M, with the ever-important annual-average value being somewhere from $27-30M.
The fact that Balakey is still unemployed indicates that he did not accept this offer, and in spite of my critical tone, I get it in the sense that nobody ever really wants to bite on the first thing they were offered, and even if it were coming from the cash-rich Yankees, I’m sure a guy like Balakey saw the big bucks being flung at Shohei Ohtani, Tyler Glasnow, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, whom hasn’t even thrown a single fucking pitch with an MLB baseball, and thought he could get more.
Little did anyone anticipate, this would turn out to be another, what I like to call a, free agent collusion desert offseason, where it’s apparent that MLB owners are seemingly colluding to freeze out a notable number of free agents, in order to kill the market and bring the cost of free agents down, and I can’t say that I blame them, because free agent deals are decades past out of control, and I often enjoy seeing professional athletes bet on themselves and fail miserably.
And unfortunately for Blake Snell, he’s under the cutoff line of free agents that were must-have, and is relegated to suffering the denigration of watching Spring Training camps begin without knowing where he’s going to go, and will likely have to shack up with a number of other free agents, along with a bunch of scrambling minor leaguers, has-beens and other bodies that know how to play some baseball at some embarrassing makeshift free agent training camp, in order to try and stay in-shape for when he’ll inevitably be forced to take something below his desired monetary demands.
Of course, I don’t feel a single iota of pity for his malady, because even if and when he’s going to be forced to take a below-market deal, the reality is that (according to Spotrac), Balakey has still made $47M in career earnings. Yes, I’m sure the armchair statgeek SABRfan will proclaim that he’s been woefully underpaid throughout his eight Major League seasons, especially considering he’s won two Cy Youngs in the process, but the guy has still cleared more cheese than some businesses make annually.
Tell me why I’m supposed to feel bad that a guy isn’t going to be getting another $150+ while I’m killing myself monthly in order to make ends meet.
It’s not that Balakey Snell doesn’t deserve a big contract, but if MLB owners are like me, I feel like he’s developed this reputation of being a guy that is solely out for money and nothing else. And not that there’s anything wrong with that, but teams tend to prefer players who at least can pretend like they give a shit about the city, the franchise’s history and legacy, fans, and other rhetoric MLB likes to use to expound why they’re the National Pastime, and in that regard, Balakey Snell has absolutely sucked.
He was the first guy to really spout off during the pandemic about how he felt that players should still be paid in full despite playing in 100 fewer games, which clearly didn’t sit too well with the permanently-penny-pinching Rays who shipped his ass off to the Padres a year later, where in true baseball degen fashion, saved his best season for his walk year, where he went gangbusters and won the NL Cy Young.
But aside from this perceived money-grubbing reputation, the fact of the matter is that as talented of a starting pitcher he is, he’s not an innings-eater, full stop. No matter how much the game is changing these days, and how reliant teams are on their bullpens, one baseball skill that has never, and will never go out of fashion, is the ability to chew up innings, and that’s something that Balakey Snell has never been great at.
The book on him is that yes, he will strikeout a lot of guys, but he will also walk more than is necessary, and he seldom goes beyond six innings. He’s never thrown a complete game, probably never will, and because he is so often out after five or six innings, that’s most likely another reliever a team will have to carry on their roster to help cover the 3-4 innings a start that he leaves behind, and in today’s relief-favorable market, that could be another $8-12M to have to spend on a reputably reliable reliever on top of the $27M+ already being paid to Balakey.
Make no mistake though, someone will eventually pick up Balakey; he’s too good of a pitcher to stay unemployed. I just hope it’s for less than what the Yankees originally offered him, and I’d be tickled if it were for a short-team deal, because there’s little professional athletes seem to hate more than short-team deals, because it means that they have to work hard in order to have another crack at a big money deal.
And I really hope that Trevor Bauer coming out and saying he’ll play for basically nothing really drives down the Balakey Snell market, because at any given point, every MLB team is probably thinking they could rent Trevor Bauer for $725K instead of having to commit to Balakey for $27.5M+ for 3+ years and probably get comparable production, even if he does bring some negative PR to the organization; that kind of savings is impossible for any team’s bean counting department to ignore and not consider. If it already hasn’t.
Either way though, I love seeing professional athletes get taken to the shed. They’ll always have more money than I’ll have in 100 lifetimes, so it’s always a pleasure to see them have to sweat it out like a pleeb.
