SI:AM | Reigning Cy Young Winner Blake Snell Finally Finds a Home

Plus, how the Falcons landed Kirk Cousins.

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I would have completed today’s newsletter earlier but watched Anthony Edwards’s dunk a few more times. 

In today’s SI:AM:

💸 Blake Snell’s deal

🗽 Soto’s Broadway debut

📝 The 10 best NFL signings

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What took so long?

With Opening Day just over a week away, last year’s National League Cy Young winner has finally found a new team.

Blake Snell and the San Francisco Giants reportedly agreed to a deal yesterday on a two-year contract worth $62 million. Snell can opt out of the contract after the first year.

Snell, 31, won his second Cy Young last season after leading the majors with a 2.25 ERA. He’s one of seven pitchers to win a Cy Young in both the AL and NL, having also won one in 2018 as a member of the Tampa Bay Rays. But it took him until the very last moment to find a team for this season.

The New York Yankees reportedly offered Snell $150 million over six years ($25 million per year) back in January, but Snell and his agent Scott Boras turned it down. MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand reported at the time that Snell wanted either a higher average annual value (at least $30 million per year) or a longer contract. His initial asking price was reportedly $200 million. Not only did Snell fall well short of his desired number, he didn’t come close to equalling what the Yankees offered him. New York later rescinded that $150 million offer, USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reported.

There has been a lot of talk this offseason about how Boras and his clients fared in free agency negotiations. Boras clients Cody Bellinger and Matt Chapman also entered the offseason seeking big paydays, only to have to settle for significantly less. Bellinger was said to be asking for $200 million and Chapman was reportedly asking for $150 million. Bellinger returned to the Chicago Cubs for $80 million over three years (with opt-outs after each season) and Chapman got $54 million over three years from the Giants. Another top Boras client, pitcher Jordan Montgomery, remains unsigned.

That ties in with another bit of news from last night. According to multiple reports, dozens of MLBPA players representatives met yesterday to voice their displeasure with the union’s second-in-command, deputy executive director Bruce Meyer. The players reportedly want to replace Meyer with Harry Marino, a former MLBPA lawyer who helped the union negotiate the first CBA for minor league players last year.

One reason players want Meyer ousted is because they believe he is tied too closely to Boras.

“Many players and agents have long grumbled about union leadership, suspecting that agent Scott Boras has outsized influence, which Boras and union leadership have always denied,” The Athletic’s Evan Drellich and Ken Rosenthal reported. “But player agents have maintained those complaints for years, particularly in regard to the fortunes of baseball’s middle class.”

But the main source of the players’ displeasure is this winter’s dramatic decrease in free-agent spending. After teams spent $3.9 billion signing players last offseason, that number has dropped to $2.9 billion this season, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported. A significant portion of that money has gone to just two players, both signed by the Los Angeles Dodgers: Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Their contracts ($700 million for Ohtani and $325 million Yamamoto) account for about one-third of all free agent spending this year.

Though rather than the Dodgers’ offseason spending spree enticing other clubs to bid aggressively on players to keep up with the West Coast superteam, most franchises have decided to sit back and not exceed the luxury tax threshold. The limited number of suitors for top free agents means teams aren’t engaging in bidding wars that drive salaries up.

There are a lot of reasons why teams might be hesitant to spend. The luxury tax is one. The most pressing one, though, may be the uncertainty over the future of broadcast revenues. For years, teams have relied heavily on money from TV contracts to support their payrolls. But the bankruptcy of Diamond Sports Group, the parent company of Bally Sports, which airs games for more than a dozen teams, has clubs doubting how much longer they can rely on that TV revenue.

The current CBA between the players and the owners runs through the end of the 2026 season, so the union has less than two years to get its act together before another contentious round of negotiations.

The best of Sports Illustrated

Kim Klement Neitzel/USA TODAY Sports

• The pressure is on for Juan Soto to perform in what could be a one-year cameo with the Yankees. Tom Verducci explains why the deal was a no-brainer for New York—and the one trap that Soto could fall into.
• Albert Breer got the inside scoop on how the Falcons landed Kirk Cousins.
• The Cousins deal tops Matt Verderame’s list of the best NFL free agent signings thus far.
• Ryan Garcia’s erratic behavior has cast doubt over his scheduled fight against Devin Haney next month, but Haney tells Chris Mannix that he’s trying to block out the distractions and prepare for his fight.
• If you’re tired of serious NCAA tournament coverage, Patrick Andres ranked every mascot in the field.
• Joel Embiid has returned to practice for the first time since injuring his knee in January.
• The 49ers will forfeit a draft pick as punishment for a salary cap error that the NFL believes was accidental.

The top five...

… things I saw last night:

5. Kyle Lowry’s effort to try to save a loose ball, flying over the scorer’s table.

4. Sonny Milano’s long backhand assist for the Capitals.

3. Jalen Johnson’s dunk over Austin Reaves and Reaves’s humorous interaction with a reporter when asked about the play.

2. Anthony Edwards’s nasty dunk on John Collins. He slammed it home so hard he dislocated a finger.

1. Edwards’s reaction to seeing the video of the play for the first time.

SIQ

Which team won the first Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women basketball championship on this day in 1972?

• Delta State
• Delaware
• Queens College (N.Y.)
• Immaculata

Yesterday’s SIQ: Though it didn’t officially count because it came in a spring training game, which notable career first did MLB pitcher Jim Abbott (best known for having one hand) achieve on March 18, 1991?

• First home run
• First hit (a triple)
• First shutout
• First stolen base

Answer: First hit (a triple). Abbott was embarking on his third season in the majors, but because he played for the California Angels in the American League, he never needed to step into the batter’s box. But in a spring training game against the San Francisco Giants, he laced a ball into the right-center field gap and motored around to third base for the first hit of his career.

“It was a fastball,” Abbott said after the game. “I think [pitcher Rick Reuschel] was being kind.”

Abbott didn’t come to the plate in a regular season game until he signed with the NL’s Milwaukee Brewers in 1999. He picked up two hits that year—the first a line-drive RBI single over the head of the shortstop and the second a grounder up the middle that drove in two runs.