The Loop

Rays ace Blake Snell reacts to Tommy Pham trade during a live stream in the most real and hilarious way possible

December 06, 2019

Tampa Bay Rays ace Blake Snell lost one of his best teammates to a trade in the wee hours of Friday morning when Tommy Pham was dealt to the San Diego Padres. Normally, we'd never know how Snell or any of his other Rays teammates immediately reacted to that news. Perhaps eventually we'd hear a comment from the southpaw, something like "we'll miss him", "it's part of the business," yada, yada, yada. Riveting stuff.

But thanks to a video game live stream, baseball fans got a glimpse of how players really react to one of the best players on their team getting moved. During the live stream, Snell saw the Pham news, put his hand on his head and said "we gave Pham up for [Hunter] Renfroe and a damn... slapdick prospect?"

No, seriously, this is a thing that happened. Have a watch:

As media members, we're always hoping for raw, emotional answers from players. Leave it to a video game live stream to do our job better than we ever could.

Snell was understandably upset, as Pham was one of the Rays' best players during his time in Tampa. In 184 games as a Ray, Pham hit 28 homers, knocked in 90 runs and stole 30 bases. The Rays acquired him in July of 2018 in exchange for three minor leaguers, and are now dealing the outfielder after just a season and a half for Hunter Renfroe and Xavier Edwards, who, according to some, is hardly a "slapdick" prospect, as Snell called him. The 20-year-old switch-hitting infielder was the fifth-ranked prospect in the Padres farm system, which is widely regarded as the best farm system in all of baseball currently.

Snell later apologized on the live stream, saying "I’m not trying to belittle a minor leaguer. It’s just super-rude toward that guy. That kid didn’t deserve me calling him a "slapdick", let’s be honest ... Tommy’s the man, bro. It’s just hella stupid."

Good on Snell to apologize, and hopefully Edwards doesn't take any offense. All that said, "slapdick" is about as funny as it gets. But it's still the second-best use of "slapdick" in sports history. The top "slapdick" honor, of course, belongs to Rex Ryan:

Everybody focuses on the "goddamn snack" part of this speech. The use of "slapdick" is CRIMINALLY underrated. I just typed "slapdick" six times in this post. How's your Friday going?