Top 100 Angels: J.T. SNOW #99

   I never thought much of him as an angel

The 1990s Angels are filled with guys we couldn’t develop or get production from, and then went bonkers or semi-bonkers elsewhere (Snow, Damion Easley, Gary Gaetti, Phil Nevin, Dante Bichette). Even Jim Edmonds didn’t really start hitting the tarnation out of the ball until he left town.

While the ultimate blame lays with the individuals, at least some, I think, should go to the hitting coach of the time — Rod Carew.

If we had kept J.T. Snow, and he would have produced for us like he ended up producing for San Fran, ’95 would have been an afterthought on the way to many more playoff appearances. Instead, the team convinced itself it had a “four outfielders problem,” traded Snow for a mediocre starter, shipped out Chili Davis for an even more mediocre starter, then filled the resulting hole at DH/1B with an ever-worsening series of calamities — Eddie Murray, Tony Phillips, Rickey Henderson, Cecil Fielder, Greg Jeffries, Mark Johnson, Mo Vaughn.

Who would have believed that he would have hung in there that long? And according to BB-Ref, he’s made a cool $8M along the way….

…and thinking he was going to be a future stud. Still, he did have some productive years in SF and was always surehanded at 1B. In some ways, I thought Kotchman was a similar mold of JT Snow — smooth lefty swing with moderate power and a Gold Glove-caliber glove.

Hopefully we do better than a parade of the likes mattwelch mentioned above in the post-Kotchman years (read: signing of M. Teixeira…..in shallah).

He gets credit for that. It’s not quite enough to cancel out his horrific 1996 season offensively, but considering he put up decent numbers in 1995, I’m willing to give him some credit. I think 99 is a good spot, maybe a little low, but he didn’t play quite as much for the Angels as I thought he did – only 4 seasons, and one of those was mostly him being injured.

Coincidentally, I was in attendance for both of his grand slams as an Angel, and I only went to maybe two or three games a year.

I went to a game where I had the best seats I’d ever enjoyed, maybe 20 rows back of home plate, and I remember a lined shot that he immediately leapt into the air and snatched. At the time there was no replay screen from my POV, so if you missed it, like my dad did, there was nothing to see afterwards, but it’s been burned into my memory ever since. Can’t even tell you who hit the ball, who the opposing team was, who was pitching, none of it. Just that Snow reacted faster than I thought humanly possible.

the one moment that I will always remember of him was during the ‘02 World Series when he grabbed Dusty Baker’s son out of the way at home plate…

To me as a seven-year-old, that is. The first home run I ever saw—that I remember, anyway—was by JT Snow, which I watched from my family’s seats that night on the upper deck. He was my hero from that point on and still holds a special place to me in my Angel fandom. I even went as JT for Halloween that year (1993).

‘Course, I wasn’t paying a ton of attention back then and only vaguely remember who I saw—for some reason Jorge Fabregas has always stood out…probably because I always thought he looked “flabbergasted” to be up there…

growing up a young buck with the California Angels on K-Cal 9 with jerry reuss and steve psycioc.

I was sad when we let him go to the Giants

I didn’t really pay as great of attention to the games obviously in the detail I do today but I always will remember J.T. Snow being one of my favorite players growing up.

How about getting hits in all 7 games of the World Series, or his game-tying three-run shot in the NLDS against the Mets? I think he even had a three-homer game. He had the second highest post-all-star break BA in the majors (after Ichiro) in 2004, and finished batting like .328. He won 6 gold gloves. He had multiple .280/25/100-type seasons.

So yeah, he had a mediocre 2 seasons with the Angels (one of them a decent offensive year), but he had a pretty decent good career. No, he’s not Vlad or Salmon, or Manny, or whatever, but he was a more-than-serviceable starter and a classy, classy, charitable guy. He fucked up one bad play for the Angels on a big stage, and that’s all we ever remember him as. I don’t like it at all.