By midday Tuesday, the better part of two days since it had been decided they’d part ways, Blake Snell was sorting through his new life and Erik Neander seemed just kind of melancholy.
Snell had a new puppy. “Goose,” he called it, seemed to bring him some comfort. Neander, general manager of the Tampa Bay Rays, who had traded Snell to the San Diego Padres for four players, has grown a beard.
They said they understood they had every reason to be happy. From at or near the front of a new rotation, Snell was headed for the coolest city in the country to lead the swaggiest team in baseball as it is finding itself.