PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. — The reigning American League Cy Young Award winner is one year removed from when he couldn’t say much of anything, not after a 2017 season that included a jarring trip to the minor leagues.

Yet after winning 21 games, blowing away the field in adjusted ERA and providing a backbone for a pitching staff that needed one as it charted a revolutionary course, Blake Snell isn’t holding back.

Not on his potential, not on his earning power, not on his Tampa Bay Rays’ chances to upset the AL East power structure, and not on an industry landscape that gets chillier for players every winter.

First, though, is the matter of getting over the hump from potential to achievement, which Snell did in dominant fashion last year, a stunning rebuke to those doubting he’d fulfill his significant promise.

“I heard a lot of people saying I won’t, or I can’t,” Snell told USA TODAY Sports on a recent morning at Rays camp. “It kind of pissed me off. And I said, ‘I will. I don’t care what you say. Just watch.’

“I made it happen and that’s all that matters to me.”

Know this about Snell: When he speaks, the words tumble out of his mouth with the chill one expects from a Seattle native. Yet their content reveals the competitor within, and his ability to transform from fun-loving jester to the man they call “Snellzilla” every fifth day.

“Stuff, mentality, maturity. And motivation, character, mindset,” Rays general manager Erik Neander says of his 26-year-old ace. “Highly competitive individual who knows when to have fun and when to be really serious, and attack and get the job done.”

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The measurables from 2018 jump off the page: a 1.89 ERA and 219 ERA-plus (Trevor Bauer was second at 189), 221 strikeouts in 180⅔ innings. That was enough to best a deep Cy Young field – Houston’s Justin Verlander finished second – with a diverse set of cases to make.

It was other factors, however, that guided Snell through finishing school and into the pantheon of the elite.

Most notably, Snell’s devastating four-pitch mix – led by a fastball that ticked up from 94 to 96 mph last season – now comes with an even bigger helping of conviction.

“My mentality is really everything,” says Snell. “If I’m not pitching, I’m pretty laid-back, goofy. An hour until I pitch, until I’m done? It’s serious. It’s personal. I don’t like the way I felt when I got sent down (in 2017), the way I felt with my teammates. I just remember that and realize, ‘I’m not going to let that happen again.’

“So when I pitch, it’s violently personal. You’re just not going to beat me, is the way I have to look at it. Sometimes you lose, but it’s all about understanding how I’m going to get that guy out this time as well as next time.”

From surreal to sublime

The results were everything to the Rays, who endured a season like no other. They dealt away several veterans during spring training – including veteran starter Jake Odorizzi – and saw No. 2 starter Nate Eovaldi miss the start of the season due to bone spurs in his elbow.

By the trade deadline, Eovaldi and Chris Archer were shipped to Boston and Pittsburgh, respectively, leaving Snell as their only starting pitcher.

Yes, their only starting pitcher.

While injuries forced the Rays into early-season “bullpen” games, they disrupted baseball history – perhaps significantly – on May 19, when they handed the ball to closer Sergio Romo to start a game in Anaheim against the Angels.

The Opener was born.

The Rays won the game, moving to .500. By season’s end, they’d tap fireballing reliever Ryne Stanek to start 29 games, with Romo and Diego Castillo combining for 16 more “openings.”

It was far beyond an objective success: The Rays went 69-51 beginning with Romo’s opener and put together a startling 90-win season.

Both the methods and the outcome likely aren’t possible if Snell didn’t pitch into the seventh inning in 13 of his 31 starts, most of the time in dominant fashion.

“Even if we hit a little skid, we knew that when Zilla took the mound, we were in good shape,” says Stanek. “He didn’t get the national love that if he was on a bigger-market team, he would have gotten. The year he put up was incredible.”

Raising the stakes

Snell isn’t complaining about personal accolades – he does have that Cy Young to decorate a house he purchased in Seattle this offseason – but does chafe at the lens through which the Rays are often viewed. For more than a decade, they’ve been cast as the oddball overachievers led to prosperity by progressive executives such as former GM Andrew Friedman and manager Joe Maddon, to the current regime led by Neander, VP of baseball operations Chaim Bloom and manager Kevin Cash.

“That’s what keeps us relevant to the media,” says Snell. “It’s always the tricky, quirky stuff we do that gets people interested in the Rays. It’s not, ‘This team’s good.’ I haven’t felt that, at least.

“I’ve only felt, ‘They’ve got an Opener! The shift!’ All this stuff they talk about with the Rays because we start it, but it’s not like, ‘Oh, the Rays are actually really good.’ They don’t talk about that.

“It makes me want to make our name as a team way better. People can say they know us now, but we won’t get the respect until we win the World Series. Go win a World Series, and they’ll talk about you.”

After paying starter Charlie Morton a franchise-record $15 million for each of the next two seasons, and trading for versatile and hard-hitting Yandy Diaz, the Rays on paper could be better than their 2018 squad.

Those 90 wins would have tied them for the NL East title and placed them a game back of AL Central champion Cleveland. In the AL East, however, it put them 10 games behind the Yankees and 18 games behind the 108-win, World Series champion Red Sox.

The path does not change this year. So the mentality must, Snell says, when the Rays face the Yankees and Red Sox 38 times.

“When you play those good teams, you’re the team that looks them in the eyes and says, ‘Let’s go. You have nowhere to go,’” he says. “And that’s kind of where our mentality needs to be – more personal. A ‘We’re here to embarrass you,’ type thing, as opposed to, ‘Well, I hope we win.’

“It needs to be way more personal. It needs to be, we’re here to set a tone. It doesn’t mean you’re crazy, it just means you believe inside you’re going to beat this team.”

Deal or no deal

Snell is pumped by Morton’s addition, saying he “loves everything about” the former Astros postseason hero. Despite Morton’s salary, the Rays’ opening-day payroll should still be somewhere in the $60 million range.

They’ve become a favored talking point for Commissioner Rob Manfred, who recently disputed the notion that spending correlates strongly to on-field prosperity.

Snell smirks. He’s bullish on the Rays, yet knowsthere are upgrades available on the sluggish free-agent market. And also believes cost efficiency and winning don’t always coexist.

“(Manfred) has to boost up the league and say all the teams that aren’t spending money, they still can be good,” says Snell. “But we’re just a good team that kept trading our great players for a lot of prospects, and it timed up well. I think he’s just trying to promote that you don’t need to spend as much money, which is bull, especially with how many bats are out there.

“I think of free agency and it used to be the place to be, and now it’s not. I got upset when I saw (infielder) Josh Harrison sign (with Detroit) for one year and $2 million. What? Dude’s a beast. It was so saddening. But it’s like, why don’t you just make a team better? There’s a legit team of free agents. What? (Craig) Kimbrel, come here, please! I wouldn’t mind Adam Jones, a lot of people. A pretty good list.

“An expansion team, let’s do it, right now, from free agency.”

The Rays’ model has long been to approach young players extremely early and offer them contract extensions that buy out arbitration and early free agent years; pitchers such as James Shields, Wade Davis, Matt Moore and Chris Archer opted for long-term security, while Cy Young winner David Price chose a year-to-year approach.

Price was eventually traded to Detroit and ultimately signed the largest free agent contract for a pitcher — $217 million with the Boston Red Sox in 2016.

The market has shifted since then, and it’s unknown if such riches will be available to Snell. The cold winds of free agency possibly prompted All-Stars like Philadelphia’s Aaron Nola (four years, $45 million) and the Yankees’ Luis Severino (four years, $40 million) to sign extensions that carry them into free agency.

Snell has waived off efforts to extend him in the past; he’s excited to try his lot through arbitration, beginning after this season, and sees it as an obligation.

“I don’t see the point in signing a deal,” says Snell. “I’d rather just try to max everything else out in arb, believe in myself, push myself. It allows me to really see what I got, and what I can do and make.

“I don’t think there’s anything more beautiful than betting on yourself and achieving it every time. And that’s kind of what needs to happen. I just don’t want to sign an early deal that leaves money off the table. It messes up the players (earnings) behind me. I’d rather just keep maxing contracts out and hopefully that helps (future players) get a little more money. Because that’s what used to happen. There were none of these early deals. It was about helping the guys coming after you.”

And if 2018 taught him anything, it’s that setting ceilings is unwise.

“The way he’s talked, he feels there’s room for improvement,” says Cash. “Sign me up as someone who would love to see it.

“If he’s motivated, get out of the way.”