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I can\u2019t say that I\u2019m particularly a fan of pitcher Blake Snell; I tend to not care for baseball players that act like out-of-touch man-babies when it comes to how much they\u2019re paid for the privilege of playing professional baseball, and Snell is amongst the worst.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He once suggested that players should\u2019ve been paid their full salaries during the COVID season, and he\u2019s one of those guys that it\u2019s pretty clear that his full career objective is accumulating as much money as possible, which inherently there\u2019s nothing wrong with, but it\u2019s also the way that he\u2019s trying to accomplish it with an inequitable amount of effort exerted to earn it that rubs me the wrong way.<\/span><\/p>\n This past off-season was a delight to see him flounder away during free agency, and basically becoming the cautionary poster boy for talented free agent to get absolutely pwned by the process.\u00a0 He was looking for comparable money that the Dodgers had paid Japanese import Yoshinobu Yamamoto (12-year, $365M), and along the way had turned down an offer from the Yankees that was half that, thinking if he held out, he could get better, if not comparable.<\/span><\/p>\n He was wrong.\u00a0 Delightfully.<\/span><\/p>\n Ultimately, he signed with the Giants on a two-year, $62M deal which is still an egregious annual value to a human being to throw a baseball over and over again, and seeing as how it had an opt-out clause in between, it was evident that Snell\u2019s goal was going to be to pitch his ass off, opt-out, and try again for a Yamamoto deal, while also having the security cushion of a fat $31M second year with the Giants if things fell through.<\/span><\/p>\n The 2024 season couldn\u2019t have started off any worse for someone playing the game Snell was trying to play; he would go 0-3, never getting out of the fifth inning, and have an ERA of 11.57.\u00a0 His peripherals were shit, he was throwing too many pitches, walking too many guys, and downright sucked.\u00a0 It was clear that he basically did no work or working out during the offseason, and didn\u2019t prepare at all during the spring since he was technically unemployed almost until the start of the season, and it was showing on the field.<\/span><\/p>\n He was put on the DL for sucking, AKA bullshit injury to justify poor performance, and came back at the end of May, where he would proceed to string together three more shitty starts, where he still couldn\u2019t get out of the fifth inning, and was pitching terribly, but was masked by the fact that the Giants still won two of those games in spite of him.<\/span><\/p>\n I relished in Snell\u2019s poor performance, and despite my general disdain for Bay Area sports fans, even I didn\u2019t think they deserved the turd that the Blake Snell contract was turning into.\u00a0 Without question, he was going to opt-in to year two of his deal, and hamstring the Giants for another $31M that could\u2019ve been utilized in so many better ways.<\/span><\/p>\n Once again he went on the DL for sucking, and he was back on July 9th<\/sup> and this is where the story really begins.\u00a0 Snell would pitch five innings, giving up just a single hit and no runs, and the Giants would win.\u00a0 The Giants would win two of his next three starts, with Snell pitching like the two-time Cy Young winner he was.<\/span><\/p>\n On August 2nd<\/sup>, Snell would get the first win of his season, after pitching a fucking no-hitter<\/strong> against the Cincinnati Reds, and he would follow that with another quality start and another win.<\/span><\/p>\n The overall picture of Blake Snell\u2019s current 2024 isn\u2019t notable \u2013 2-3 W-L in 12 starts, a 4.31 ERA, with the Giants going 7-5.\u00a0 But since July, he\u2019s gone 2-0 in six starts, has an ERA of 1.15 and the team has gone 5-1.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s very apparent that he\u2019s finally woken up, and that he\u2019s beginning to pitch his ass off so that he can opt-out at the end of the season and make another try for a long-term Yamamoto-money deal.<\/span><\/p>\n Here\u2019s the thing though, as many words as I\u2019ve spoken to be critical about Blake Snell, I actually have never bothered to really take a deep dive into the numbers that paint the picture of Blake Snell; until now.\u00a0 And the most interesting thing I\u2019m discovering about ol\u2019 Balakey is that save for the no-hitter, the season narrative described above is absolutely nothing out of the ordinary<\/em><\/strong> for him.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ve read numerous times about how Snell is \u201ca slow starter\u201d but figured it was typical media defending of the guy.\u00a0 But looking at his career numbers and splits, slow starter doesn\u2019t do the man justice.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m now convinced that Blake Snell is probably the smartest baseball player there is, at the way he has absolutely gamed the game of baseball in order to make as much money as he can, with the least amount of effort possible.\u00a0 I mean, the guy streams video games in his downtime, gaming is nothing outside of his realm of interests, and it\u2019s apparent that he\u2019s brought that mentality into his career strategy.<\/span><\/p>\n Looking over his game logs over the last few seasons, which were coincidentally the most critical years in terms of showcasing himself in preparation for free agency, his Aprils have as many L\u2019s as the 2024 Chicago White Sox, and he looks like shit; can\u2019t get more than five innings, giving up lots of runs, mundane strikeout numbers.<\/span><\/p>\n But then July hits each year, Snell\u2019s fairy godmother materializes out of nowhere and turns him into fucking Nolan Ryan.\u00a0 He starts piling up strikeouts, the inning numbers start turning from 5.0 to 7.0, and the team starts piling up W\u2019s like they\u2019re the 1996 Chicago Bulls.<\/span><\/p>\n This isn\u2019t hyperbole, there really is that drastic of a split between the first halves and second halves of his seasons, career-wide:<\/span><\/p>\n 1st<\/sup> Halves: 28-39 W-L, 3.98 ERA, 1.339 WHIP, 10.9 K\/9<\/span> Now I know all these numbers don\u2019t mean a thing to anyone who doesn\u2019t follow baseball, but what it really says is that Blake Snell is trash in the first half of most seasons, and turns into a fucking demi-god in the second half.\u00a0 He walks fewer guys, strikes out more guys, and the team just flat out wins.<\/span><\/p>\n And the thing is, I don\u2019t think this is coincidental, I don\u2019t think this is fluky, I think it\u2019s entirely by design and mostly deliberate by Blake Snell.\u00a0 It\u2019s no secret in the world of professional sports that athletes tend to metaphorically hit the NOS during their walk-years, and there\u2019s mountains of evidence that exist these days to justify such a notion.\u00a0 It\u2019s also no secret that professional sport is influenced tremendously by recency bias, where the most recent version of an athlete is the one to consider when it comes time to negotiate dolla-dollas.<\/span><\/p>\n I may not be a fan of Blake Snell\u2019s perceived-by-me money-grubbing ways, but I see you, Balakey.\u00a0 I kind of respect the cerebral approach to optimizing his earning capabilities.\u00a0 I\u2019m not going to poo-poo on a guy\u2019s effort to make as much money as he can, but at the same time, I\u2019m not going to also not think that it does seem crappy to the teams, the fans of those teams, and those who root for him, to often be knowing that unless it\u2019s July or later, he\u2019s probably holding something back and not trying his hardest, because as he\u2019s demonstrated for us all over the last few years, those April-May-June starts definitely don\u2019t mean as much as the months July and on.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I can\u2019t say that I\u2019m particularly a fan of pitcher Blake Snell; I tend to not care for baseball players that act like out-of-touch man-babies when it comes to how much they\u2019re paid for the privilege of playing professional baseball, and Snell is amongst the worst.\u00a0 He once suggested that players should\u2019ve been paid their … Continue reading I see you, Balakey<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[62,79,100,191,83,52,49],"class_list":["post-50115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-baseball","tag-cashmoney","tag-comparison","tag-greed","tag-observations","tag-owned","tag-wtf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50115"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50117,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50115\/revisions\/50117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n2nd<\/sup> Halves: 41-17 W-L, 2.41 ERA, 1.097 WHIP, 11.4 K\/9<\/span><\/p>\n