Top NYY Could-Have-Beens: J.T. Snow

01/10/2025 12:00 PM

The one-time Yankee farmhand enjoyed a long career after his ouster from New York.

J.T. Snow had a distinguished, 16-year MLB career, during which he won six Gold Gloves, garnered MVP votes, and performed well in one of the century's more competitive World Series. He's not a Hall of Famer, but he will go down as one of the most respected players in San Francisco Giants history. When the team dedicated its Wall of Fame at Oracle Park in 2008, Snow was included in the inaugural class.

Before Snow entered Giants lore, and before he was even an Angel, he was an up-and-coming Yankees first baseman, dealt after just seven career games.

Years in Yankees Organization: 1989-92

How They Left: Traded to Angels in December 1992

Career MLB Yankees Statistics: 7 games, 2 hits, 19 plate appearances, .583 OPS
Career MLB Statistics: 16 seasons, 1,716 games, 1,509 hits, 189 home runs, .784 OPS, 105 OPS+

The son of Jack Snow, who enjoyed an 11-year NFL career as a wide receiver with the nearby Rams, J.T. grew up in the Los Angeles area. He was a three-sport standout at Los Alamitos High School, earning All-Orange County honors in baseball as well as football and basketball. On the baseball team, he was teammates with Robb Nen, with whom he would later overlap for five seasons in San Francisco, including the 2002 World Series run. Snow then attended the University of Arizona, where he was named to the All-Pac-10 team.

That résumé was enough to draw the attention of the Yankees, who picked up the young first baseman in the fifth round of the 1989 MLB Draft. He reported to Oneonta that year, and the switch-hitter slashed .292/.359/.460 in his first 73 professional games. Snow was promoted to High-A Prince William in 1990 and Double-A Albany in 1991, where he was named to the Eastern League's All-Star team.

Before the 1992 season, the Yankees Yearbook described the prospect as "known for his outstanding defensive ability," a reputation that would stick throughout his career. In fact, he was so historically well-regarded that when Baseball America did a 30-year retrospective of its "Best Tools" series by position, there was only one first baseman who was honored annually more than Snow during the 1988-2018 span: the man in front of him on the 1992 Yankees' depth chart, captain Don Mattingly.

Best Defensive First Baseman
Don Mattingly, 8 wins
J.T. Snow, 6
Mark Teixeira, 6

Snow continued to make strides at the plate, too. He had a huge year for Triple-A Columbus, winning the International League batting title by hitting .313/.395/.474 with 45 extra-base hits in 135 games. He also walked more often than he struck out.

That performance earned the 24-year-old his first call-up. Snow struggled in limited action, hitting .143 with only a single and a double in 19 at-bats that September as the Yankees limped toward their most recent losing season. That did little to take the shine off Snow, who cracked BA's Top 100 prospect list after the season (ranking 98th). His rising profile ended up spelling the end of his time in New York.

Blocked by Mattingly at first base, Snow was asked by the Yankees to play winter ball to learn the outfield. When the natural first baseman balked, the team deemed him expendable for the right trade. So Snow was packaged in a three-for-one deal, as he, BA Top-100 pitching prospect Russ Springer, and reliever Jerry Nielsen went to the Angels for Jim Abbott.

Entering his age-25 season, Abbott was regarded as one of the best young pitchers in baseball. He was more than just an inspirational story; in the two seasons before the trade, the left-hander posted a 2.83 ERA across 63 starts (9.9 fWAR) and finished third in AL Cy Young Award voting for 1991. He was a true fan favorite in Southern California. As such, despite his local bona fides and his father's LA legacy, Snow received an icy reception upon his homecoming. "People were upset about the trade," Snow himself later conceded. "There wasn't one good thing said about it."

Despite his father working as a morning sports show host, Snow stopped listening to sports radio altogether that offseason to avoid the bevy of vitriol directed his way by local media.

The hometown kid got off to a hot start his first season in California, launching 6 homers in his first 16 games, before cooling off considerably. After a mediocre debut, the acclaimed prospect struggled so mightily in his second campaign that he was demoted to Triple-A for much of the 1994 season. That made 1995 something of a make-or-break year for Snow who, now 27, was running short on opportunities. He bounced back nicely, though, slashing .289/.353/.465 with 24 homers for his first-ever OPS+ above league average while taking home the first of what would be six consecutive Gold Gloves at first. After regressing the next season at the plate, the Angels moved Snow to San Francisco for Allen Watson, a former first-round pick who never clicked in the majors, and Fausto Macey, who never ended up cracking the big leagues.

Snow proceeded to have his best season yet, registering a .898 OPS along with an all-time-best 28 home runs and 104 RBI. He receiving the only MVP votes of his long career following the Giants' surprising run from 94 losses in '96 to an NL West crown in '97. After a tumultuous start to his career, Snow had finally found his home.

In all, Snow would spend nine years with the Giants and the fans really took to him. Although his offense could be inconsistent at times (he eventually stopped switch-hitting and became a pure lefty), Snow was a reliable defender who was a fundamental component of four playoff teams in the Bay. During his prime from 1997-2004, he hit .273/.372/.445 with 211 doubles, 120 homers, and a 115 OPS+.

Incidentally, Snow had long since ditched the pinstripes in 2000, but all the same, he got to join in on the dynasty Yankees' longtradition of wrecking nemesis closer Armando Benítez. The Mets upset the Giants in the 2000 NLDS, but not through no fault of Snow, who provided San Francisco's highlight of the series with a dramatic blast off Benítez in the ninth inning of Game 2.

Snow's shining moment came in 2002, when the Giants reached the World Series for the first time in 13 years, and he batted .407/.448/.556 in 29 plate appearances. Barry Bonds was obviously the star of the show, but Snow was a valued member of the supporting cast. Most memorably, in Game 5 Snow scooped up the three-year-old son of his manager, Dusty Baker, who was serving as batboy and nearly got steamrolled by multiple runners while darting out too soon to retrieve Kenny Lofton's bat near home plate.

(As an aside, that same three-year-old is now a big leaguer with the Nationals. Time flies.)

Snow helped key his squad to three victories against the team that spurned him nearly six years earlier, though the Giants dealt their fans heartbreak by blowing a 5-0 lead late in Game 6 and falling to the Halos in seven.

By the time Snow left San Francisco after the 2005 season, he ranked 21st in games played and 24th in home runs in the Giants' long history. He played in 38 games with the Red Sox in 2006 but, at the age of 38, his days as a productive contributor were behind him. He returned to San Francisco for one game in 2008 to retire as a Giant, taking the field before being removed to an ovation from the crowd before seeing any action. After his retirement, Snow worked as a radio announcer for the Giants and a roving instructor for several years. He spent part of 2024 coaching the independent Oakland Ballers and has recently been angling for a role in Buster Posey's Giants front office.

Considering Mattingly's marked decline after the Snow trade and premature retirement after the 1995 season, the decision to jettison the young first baseman was a setback for the Yankees. It became clear that they would be forced to consider external options for a true replacement. Thankfully, Tino Martinez was available and New York swung the trade that they needed to make to help distance themselves from the Snow move. And for as nice a player as Snow was in the late '90s, few outside California would take what he did then over Tino's contributions in the Bronx. All's well that ends well, so consider this one of the happier all-around endings in our "Best Could-Have-Beens" series.

While never an All-Star, the defensive specialist Snow posted many strong seasons while Abbott, for his part, lasted only two middling seasons in New York (memorable no-hitter notwithstanding). Consider the Abbott/Snow trade a rare—if well-reasoned—misstep of the Gene Michael era.

Previously on Top Could-Have-Been Yankees

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