Jamie Nye: Taking a risk with COVID-19 shouldn’t come with a blank cheque

Blake Snell should have left the money out of his rant about not wanting to return to play.

The Tampa Bay Rays pitcher and former Cy Young Award winner has a problem with returning to the field with the risk of COVID-19. That is understandable. There’s no vaccine and there are no guarantees the players won’t put themselves at a higher risk of an outbreak going through a clubhouse or multiple clubhouses if they all return.

But Snell made it clear he does have a price and that’s not exactly about the risk of the disease. No, he made it clear if baseball players return, he wants his full salary. No way is he taking a pay cut to get back to the game and take the health risk that may be associated with it.

If Snell says, “There is no amount of money you could pay me to return,” that’d be fine. Clearly, you’d have to respect him to think about his health and others.

But he didn’t.

Rather than taking a stand against risking players’ health in the midst of a pandemic, he became an easy target as a poster boy of greed.