Tampa Bay Rays: Three Questions Following the Blake Snell Trade

The Tampa Bay Rays have agreed to send 2018 AL Cy Young winner Blake Snell to the San Diego Padres in exchange for RHPs Luis Patino and Cole Wilcox, and catchers Francisco Mejia and Blake Hunt. What’s next for the reigning AL Champs after trading away their ace?

It’s rare to see a team coming off an AL Pennant become sellers rather than buyers. So, when rumors emerged that the Tampa Bay Rays were looking to trade their All-Star lefty ace Blake Snell just months after his Game 6 start in the 2020 World Series, baseball fans were perplexed.

However, anyone familiar with the way the Rays organization functions knew this was a looming inevitability. In an article last month, I tried to make sense of the Blake Snell trade rumors, which essentially boiled down to the Rays’ effort to keep payroll as low as possible while developing their deep pool of young talent into key contributors at the MLB level.

This approach is nothing new. The Rays front office has made a habit out of trading star players when their price tag gets too high, and stockpiling their farm system in return. That is why the Rays consistently have one of the top farm systems in baseball paired with one of the lowest payrolls.

While this might be frustrating for fans and enemies alike, the Rays do have an excellent track record when trading former aces. James Shields earned them Wil Myers and Jake Odorizzi. David Price had an expiring contract, and they netted Willy Adames in exchange.  And Chris Archer…well its pretty obvious who won that trade.

However, this one feels a bit different. Blake Snell is under a team-friendly contract until 2023, and the Rays are coming off their best season in franchise history. There are the obvious financial reasons (Snell was taking up over 20% of their payroll, and would increase every year until 2023). However, it still seemed that the logical next steps to add a few key pieces to take them over the top rather than subtract arguably their best player.

But alas, the Rays are not like any other team in MLB. They have routinely found unique ways to embrace their identity as a small-market team and transform it into stellar production on the field. Whether its their intense dedication to analytics on their field, or lack of hesitation to trade star players in order to cut costs and stockpile their farm system, the Rays approach makes them one-of-a-kind.

While I can try to rationalize the Blake Snell trade using Tampa’s long-term, small-market strategic framework, the truth is that this creates more immediate questions than it answers for the Rays right now. Here are the three questions the Tampa Bay Rays must answer in the wake of the Blake Snell trade:

Three questions following the Blake Snell trade

What will the Rays’ 2021 starting rotation look like?

In 2020, starting pitching was one of the Tampa Bay Rays’ biggest strengths. The 1-2-3 punch of Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, and Charlie Morton proved to be lethal both in the regular and post-seasons. Furthermore, the strength of their bullpen allowed them to keep their starters fresh throughout the season, with each of those three rarely exceeding more than 5 innings pitched per start.

The combo of Snell, Glasnow, Morton, and their opener strategy that manager Kevin Cash helped pioneer to the rest of the league gave the Rays one hell of a pitching staff. This staff was able to strikeout opposing teams at a high clip, and stifled some of the league’s best offenses in the postseason.

However, Charlie Morton left to sign with the Atlanta Braves, and now Blake Snell is a Padre. That leaves just Tyler Glasnow and Michael Wacha, who they recently signed to a one-year/$3 million dollar deal.

Glasnow has proven himself more than capable of taking the mantle as the Rays’ new ace. However, he has been injury-prone so far in his young career, and has been inconsistent at times. Despite that, there should be little concern about Glasnow’s role in the Rays’ rotation.

Wacha is much more of a question mark, as he is coming off a slew of underwhelming seasons after starting off his career rather strong in St. Louis. He pitched to a 6.62 ERA in one seasons with the Mets, so the Rays were able to get him at a bargain-bin price. He is still only 29 years old, and while he too has been injury-prone, he looks like a good candidate for a classic Rays’ reclamation project.

From there, however, the Rays’ starting rotation gets much murkier. Who is going to fill that number three spot? Will Ryan Yarbrough finally have his chance to shine, or will they go out and sign another veteran to eat some innings? It could be one or the other, or both.

Which young prospects will be given a shot to compete for spots in the rotation. Brent Honeywell and Shane McClanahan seem like the most likely candidates, and now Luis Patino enters the mix after the trade with San Diego. If anything, it will be interesting to see how the Rays manage their wealth of young pitching talent this year, when it appears they will need them to produce on the MLB level sooner rather than later.

Lastly, the Tampa Bay Rays will almost certainly stick to their opener strategy in 2021. Their bullpen is still intact, and will be their biggest strength entering this season. However, you can’t roll out an opener three times per week, so the Rays are going to have to find some starters to eat up some early innings in order to hand it over to their stellar bullpen.

Three questions following the Blake Snell trade

What’s next for the Rays?

If the Blake Snell trade proved anything, it’s that the Tampa Bay Rays have found a formula that works for them. They have shown that they are not afraid to shake up a World Series caliber roster to stay committed to that formula. Yes, this poses an inherent risk, but it’s one that the Rays are more than willing to take given how successful they have been doing it in a division full of big spending powerhouses.

So after this blockbuster, it begs the question: what is next for the Rays?

First on their agenda appears to be trading Kevin Kiermaier. Kiermaier, the longest tenured Ray, is set to make a team leading $11.5 million in 2021, and $25 million more until his contract expires in 2023. However, it will not as easy to offload Kiermaier as it was for Snell.

Kiermaier provides Gold Glove defense in centerfield but has been a below average hitter throughout his career. It is unlikely the Rays will get much farm talent back in a deal for Kiermaier without eating a significant portion of his remaining contract, or including some of their prospects as well. It might be in their best interest to try and flip him for a veteran starter or catcher that can fill one of their immediate voids. Regardless, finding a partner for a Kiermaier trade will be difficult.

After that, the Rays have a lot of other questions they have to answer. The Rays clearly have no intention on forfeiting their dominance over the AL East, but now have to find ways to obtain the same amount of success without Blake Snell in a longer season, where durable starters will prove to be more valuable than in 2020.

With the Yankees looking to avenge their ALDS loss, and the Blue Jays poised to take the next step, the Rays have blown the AL East wide open by remaining committed to their tried and true formula. They certainly have not made it easier on themselves, but they never do. They are a team built on adapting to the resources they have available, even if those resources are scarce on the surface.

Luis Patino and Francisco Mejia should factor into the Tampa Bay Rays’ 2021 plans from the first day of spring training, but it will be interesting to see if anyone on their current roster can fill the void left behind by Blake Snell, both on and off the field. Kevin Cash and GM Erik Neander will have their hands full if they wish to return to the 2021 World Series, but if they are going to do it, they will do it the Rays Way.