Travis Snider was born on February 2nd, 1988, in Mill Creek, Washington, a small affluent community in the northwestern corner of the country, approximately 20 miles outside Seattle. Running lengthwise along a large country club, the city is home to Henry M. Jackson High School, a perennial baseball powerhouse (the local Little League team also frequently makes the national tournament). When Snider was a boy, his father was president of the local Little League chapter; the two would spend countless hours together, at Travis’ insistence, playing baseball. By the time he’d reached high school, the powerful left-handed slugger was a local star on the football field and the baseball diamond.
During his sophomore year, he shattered his left fibula during football practice, an injury that required the surgical insertion of eight metal screws and a plate into his leg. A prominent varsity player even as a freshman, Snider had been drawing attention from D1 schools as a football recruit; after the injury, Snider wisely quit football to focus on his budding baseball career. By his senior season, Snider was batting over .500, leading his team to an undefeated season (27-0) and garnering national attention as a wunderkind prospect (he was named to USA Today’s All-USA baseball team). In addition to his on-the-field accolades, Snider was drawing attention for his level-headedness. When he was 14, his mother contracted severe pneumonia and slipped into a two-week coma. The difficult ordeal enraged Snider, who wound up in anger management therapy after his mother threatened to force him to quit baseball if he didn’t get himself under control. He consented, and those around him claim that he emerged a changed person, handling the subsequent deaths of his grandparents- with whom he was extremely close – with a newfound maturity (his mother, already suffering from the effects of the coma, would die in a car accident about a year later).
Though he received a baseball scholarship to attend Arizona State following his senior year, he decided to turn pro when the Jays made him their first-round pick in the 2006 draft, giving him a $1.7m signing bonus. Toronto took him 14thoverall; Snider was part of a star-packed first round draft class that included Evan Longoria (TB), Clayton Kershaw (LAD), Tim Lincecum (SF), Max Scherzer (ARI), Chriz Perez (StL), and Joba Chamberlain (NYY). Elite company means little, especially in baseball, but Snider quickly began justifying the risk the Jays took in drafting a high school player (the team hadn’t taken a high schooler first round under Ricciardi’s watch, though his drafting prowess has been called into question before). His first stop was Pulaski, Virginia, then a Blue Jays Rookie -ball affiliate (the Jays dropped their affiliation with Pulaski after that season; in 2008, they became affiliated with Seattle and rejoined the Appalachian League). There, Snider was the team’s best hitter: in 194 ABs, he batted .325/.412/.567 with a team-leading 11 home runs, numbers which earned him the league’s MVP award. The following season, he was moved up to single-A Lansing, where he led the team in AVG (.313), OPS (.902), HR (16), and RBI (93), despite being the youngest player on the Lugnuts roster. He continued on into the high-profile Arizona Fall League after the season, where he made the All-Prospect team by posting an impressive .316/.404/.541 line and solidified his status as the Jays’ best young prospect.
2008 saw Snider make stops in Dunedin, FL (A+); Manchester, NH (AA); Syracuse, NY (AAA); and finally Toronto, making his big league debut at the end of last August. He spent most of his time at AA Manchester, where he tied for the team lead with 17 home runs (he won the league’s Home Run Derby) despite witnessing his AVG slip to .262. He was the youngest player on the team at each of his stops in 2008, but as the organization’s top-rated prospect (Baseball America), he did not disappoint, reaching the major league level just two years after he was drafted.
The 20-year old Snider was the second-youngest player to see a Major League field last year (youngest was fellow AFL alumnus Clayton Kershaw, who was born a month after Snider). For an extremely young player getting his first taste of the majors, his numbers were excellent: .301/.338/.466, cracking two home runs along the way (his first off Kevin Slowey, the other courtesy Paul Byrd). His contact rate was unusually low: at 70%, he was dipping into Dunn/Uggla territory, unfamiliar stuff for a kid that had excelled at every stop along his baseball journey. Though he has struggled with high strikeout totals throughout his pro career, most scouts project him as a better hitter for average than Dunn or Uggla. He will strike out his fair share, and whiffed 23 times in 73 ABs with the Jays last season, a 31.5% K rate that will come down with additional experience but will always be above the league midpoint. His pitch recognition has been the subject of some debate: in 2007, Baseball Prospectus characterized it as ”advanced,” but changed their tune heading into 2008, wondering if he was just indiscriminately letting a lot of pitches go by. He walked just 5 times with Toronto, and at this point in his career almost certainly lacks the plate discipline to hit for average over a full season in the majors, regardless of his status as an offensive phenom. Still, he’ll likely continue to post high BABIP figures as he’s done throughout the minors, putting up a 34.6% Line Drive Rate in his brief time with the club.
Listed by the Blue Jays at 5′11″, 245lbs, Snider’s never been described as lean. As a child, his prolific appetite earned him the nickname “Lunch Box,” and professionally, he’s been under a steady trickle of pressure to try and keep his weight down. It hasn’t slowed his fast-track to the majors, but he has drawn criticism from some for his perceived defensive limitations, with some scouts calling him “stiff” and wondering if he was a good-enough athlete to 
project as even an average big-league defender (though his arm is considered to be good). To his credit, he suffered no miscues in his innings with the big club last fall. Snider is currently penciled in as the Jays’ starting LF in 2009, the team apparently preferring his defense to Adam Lind’s, another young hitter with questionable glovehandling abilities. They’ve told him to show up to spring training ready to compete for a job, of course. This arrangement would appear contingent upon the Jays sticking with Lyle Overbay at first, which the Jays appear comfortable with, if not thrilled about. Overbay, who is signed through 2010 ($7m/yr), is perhaps the least noteworthy first baseman in all of Major League Baseball. He hit .270/.358/.419 last year; the Jays reportedly shopped him around the trade deadline, but predictably found few takers for a replacement level 1B with a multi-year contract. The Jays lack a realistic option behind those three players (they hope that Dan Cooper, their first-round pick in 2008, can be their 1B of the future), and so would be foolish to trade Overbay unless they got a major-league bat in return, which isn’t likely to happen.
Snider will rake, and has earned rave reviews from Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, and the well-regarded Keith Law. ESPN has him tabbed as the fifth-best prospect in baseball heading into the 2009 season, citing his compact swing and natural power to all fields. For all of his abilities, there aren’t many 21-year old hitters that contribute at the major league level. Over the past three seasons, there have only been a handful of 21-year olds who’ve been given meaningful at-bats and contributed. Billy Butler (.292), Delmon Young (.288), Jay Bruce (.254), andRyan Zimmerman (.287) all fit the bill, but its obvious that such players are the exception. The Blue Jays have a few temporary options available to them if they want to keep Snider in AAA for some additional seasoning. David Smith and Buck Coats, both currently with AAA Syracuse, are not realistic callups, but Joe Inglett- who played 35 games in the OF for the Jays last year and posted a .762 OPS in 350 ABs – is someone to keep in mind. The team just signed Jason Lane to a minor league deal, a career .241 hitter that’s logged 1200 major league ABs with the Houston Astros. Lane has experience but was drafted back in 1999 and has failed to stick at the major league level, never able to make any improvements in his game. There are plenty of free agent OFs available, and the Jays could sign one that would accept a one-year deal. Garrett Anderson would be a nice platoon corner OF if he came cheap enough, as might Jim Edmonds, though he’d be unlikely to agree to a situation where he wouldn’t play CF. Signing a DH and letting Lind and Snider split time in left wouldn’t make much sense, as both are left-handed and Lind is basically Snider lite.
There isn’t much optimism in Toronto regarding the 2009 season, as the global economic downturn has hurt their bottom line; the team had to both watch A.J. Burnett jump ship to the Yankees and accept a lower payroll figure this year, meaning that instead of doing something with their theoretical Burnett savings, they’ve had to remain idle. The Jays – alongside the Orioles – are almost certain to remain AL East second-class citizens in ‘09, and are trying to convince their fans that they have a plan to get competitive in the near future. Snider, one of the players at the center of that plan, is an excellent bet to be a future All-Star outfielder for the Jays with the ability to hit for both average and power. The Jays obviously hope he can surprise them this spring and win the starting LF job outright. With just 31 days service time, Snider won’t ever be a super-two, and will not qualify for arbitration until after the 2011 season. This benefits the Jays, since they’ll already have all sorts of work to do after the 2010 season: Scott Rolen ($11m), Roy Halladay ($15.75m), B.J. Ryan ($10m), and Lyle Overbay ($7m) all come off the books after that year, representing about $44m that will have to be spent in what the Jays hope are improved economic (and baseball) conditions. Halladay will be the only one of those players the team thinks about re-signing, but he might be too expensive a 34-year old for their tastes. This is especially true given the organization’s recent track record of successfully grooming its young arms, though they’ve been less than exemplary at keeping them healthy once they’re succeeding (see: McGowan, Marcum, Janssen).
The AL East is as unfriendly a laboratory as you’ll find, and this has the potential to be an ugly year for the Jays if they find themselves unable to improve their ballclub by the beginning of the season. The team must worry about which Vernon Wells – All-Star or Hapless Injury Machine - will show up, as they are undoubtedly stuck with his foolish contract for the long haul (two other important young pieces, Aaron Hill and Alex Rios, have also seen their production fluctuate over recent seasons). Snider’s projections are all over the place: Bill James grants him 450 ABs and sees him hitting .270, while the popular CHONEsees him closer to .230 with the same amount of ABs, bothgiving him in the neighborhood of 150 Ks. If Snider can put together a .250 season with 20 HR, it’d almost certainly be looked at as a successful campaign, even if he struck out 150 times. They’d have to be careful that all those Ks didn’t go to his head, of course, which is no easy task when you’re dealing with a 21 year old kid with a mercurial past. Add the high-pressure division to the mix, andthe fact that he’ll be mixing it up with the likes of C.C. Sabathia, Jon Lester, Scott Kazmir, Andy Pettitte, David Price, Hideki Okajima, J.P. Howell, and George Sherrill (to say nothing of righties), and you’ve got what would seem a high-risk move for potentially less reward than its worth. Jays fan, accepting that the team can’t throw big FA contracts around, seem eager to roll the dice and let the new school in. They must remain competitive, so unless they have an obviously better option – and right now, they don’t, unless Inglett really hits – J.P. Ricciardi and Cito Gaston might have no choice this year but to run the kid out there and pray.
