We Can't Watch Blake Snell Pitch Because Of Greed And A Loophole

There are many reasons to be glad that Blake Snell—23 years of age, lately and currently of the Durham Bulls and recently of the Tampa Bay Rays—made his major league debut last weekend at Yankee Stadium. For one thing, it's great news for everyone in the Snell family: Blake, parents Dave and Jane, and brother Dru. For another, it's great for baseball fans: he's a good kid and will be fun to watch. All that can be safely filed under "Things That Are Good."

But it's also great news for the Rays, and not just because Snell is more likely than not to become a very good major league pitcher. No, it's good news for the Rays mostly because by calling Snell up for a start on Saturday instead of on, say, Friday, Tampa Bay guaranteed themselves, by dint of what can only be described as "service time fuckery," an additional year of Snell's services at a severely and artificially discounted price. So while this is good for everyone who cares about baseball, it is maybe most good for the organization that has successfully figured out a way to pay Snell less than he's worth for a year longer than they otherwise might have.

Snell, a tall, tan, and skinny lefthander, was drafted out of Shorewood High School in Washington by the Rays with the 52nd pick of 2011's first-year player draft. He promptly signed with the team for a $648,000 bonus—exactly the amount assigned to the slot by Major League Baseball—and was thereafter dropped into the unremittingly unglamorous world of the rookie-ball Gulf Coast League.

This is how it's supposed to go, and how it went for Snell after that—the next three seasons passed in a haze of relative anonymity and acceptably slow progress, and he began 2015 in the High-A Florida State League. High school draftees like Snell, especially pitchers, almost never spend less than three or four years in the minors. However, most don't do what Snell did in 2015.

Last year, Snell suddenly and unexpectedly became extremely good. He threw 21 scoreless innings to start his season in High-A Charlotte. Promoted to Double-A Montgomery, he struck out 79 batters in just 68 and two-thirds innings, allowing a scant 12 earned runs in the process. That earned him a promotion to Triple-A Durham, a town on the edge of big-league glory and home (presumably) to Susan Sarandon's living ghost; there, Snell struck out 57 more batters in 44 and a third more innings pitched. With very little warning, Snell was no longer just a prospect, but rather a good one.

The difference didn't have anything to do with what he threw; the fluttering fastball, plus-slider, and solid changeup were all still there from previous years. What drove Snell from the middle of the road to prospect stardom last year was mostly the way he learned how to attack hitters, according to Baseball Prospectus's minor league editor Craig Goldstein. Last year, Goldstein notes, Snell "began to understand that hitters aren't going to punish everything that's in the zone, so he began to seek contact, in a sense, and found that [when they did make contact] they still couldn't do much damage." In other words, 2015 was the year that Snell learned that he had big-boy stuff and figured out how to use it.

It paid off. Snell was Baseball America's Minor League Player of the Year, and Goldstein's Baseball Prospectus—for which, full disclosure, I also work, although I have nothing to do with their rankings—dubbed him the top prospect in Tampa Bay's system. It was quite the climb, and in any other profession the kind of performance that would earn him a hefty pay raise and long-term job security, and quickly. Which brings us to his big league debut on Saturday, which saw Snell pitch five very solid innings for the Rays.

Sadly, it also brings us to the service-time fuckery that unfolded right alongside the glory.

Here's the first thing you need to know: a "year" in the crazy, messed up world of big-league contracts isn't really a year in any normal sense of the word. A year in big-league service time actually corresponds to 172 days spent on a big-league roster, which is a few days shy of the 183 that make up an MLB season. And years of service time are important, because the collectively bargained agreement that governs the sport's labor practices dictate that a player's original team holds exclusive rights to his services for the first six "years" of his big-league career. Except, remember, not normal years. Stupid, bullshit, service-time not-quite-years.

That gives teams every incentive to game the system and keep service-time down during what we normal humans would call a player's first year. Why the hell wouldn't they? Keep a kid under 172 in his first year and you get another one tacked on to the end of the six you already had. Sure, there are rules saying you can't keep a player down for service time reasons alone, but unless execs are dumb enough to email each other saying that's what they're doing, those rules are basically impossible to enforce; this is how Kris Bryant spends a few weeks working on his defense (or whatever) at Triple-A before becoming Rookie of the Year. And, for Snell, a second relevant rule comes into play: if a player spends fewer than 20 days in the minors during the course of a season, whatever time he spends there is retroactively added to his big-league service time for that year.

So if the Rays had called Snell up on Friday, which was the 20th day of the season, rather than on Saturday, which was the 21st, he would have had all his time in Durham at the beginning of the year applied to his service clock, and thus would have been that much closer to achieving the key number of 172 in 2016. But since he was called up on Saturday, it's not a problem. The deadline has to fall somewhere, but the sketchiness is seldom this plain.

By calling him up literally not one day earlier, the Rays guaranteed that Snell, regardless of how much time he spends in the majors going forward—and he was returned to Durham immediately after the start, and so may have to wait a minute for his next shot—can accrue no more than 163 days of big-league service time in 2016; his free agency has already effectively been delayed by one year, from 2022 to 2023. Convenient how he turned out to be ready for the majors on a very day that was most profitable for his ownership group. The same misfortune befell Bryant last year. Funny world.

So, in a week during which we should be celebrating a young man's achievements, we instead have to return, yet again, to point out the nonsense begotten by a devil's compromise between the players' union and ownership—a system that has achieved the union's acquiescence by directing the vast majority of salary dollars to powerful big-league vets, who in return limit the earning power of young players like Snell. Remember, what happened on Saturday, and what happened to Bryant last year, was not an accident, and hardly was limited to the Rays. These are the intended consequences of a salary system which is unequal by design, and designed to keep the largest possible amount of money in the pockets of the most senior members of the union. This week's edition of the dollar dance was particularly ham-fisted and sketchy, sure, but the Rays' actions are only a symptom of a bigger problem, and Snell merely the latest victim. But, yeah: congratulations to all involved.