After Neal Huntington took to the press this morning to say Snell wouldn’t be demoted, Snell’s been optioned to Triple-A Indy this afternoon and Virgil Vasquez has been called up to take his place in the rotation. My guess is that Snell’s stuff is good enough to dominate AAA pitching even with his infuriating nibbling, so I don’t know what good this is going to do for him.
DK says details are to come and I’m interested to hear what Huntington has to say about this. I had the impression that his thinking lined up pretty well with this post of Charlie’s from earlier today. Rocco DeMaro is saying that Snell is telling people he asked to be demoted, which might make some sense in context with Huntington’s earlier remarks. Stay tuned.
UPDATE: DK updated his post to say Snell asked to be demoted last night, and in classic Ian Snell fashion, he comes across as a huge jackass.
His explanation basically came down to this: He sought a more positive environment: “Too much negativity. I want to be a positive person if I’m going to be here. I felt like I was going to be negative if I was going to be here, and I didn’t want to ruin this team.” He was asked to explain who actually made the call that he would go down: “I wasn’t going to allow them to say what they want. I told them I wanted to go down. It’s best for the team.”
I guess I’m reading between the lines a bit here, but I don’t think Snell wants anything to do with the coaching staff in Pittsburgh. He’s campaigning for a trade, and I think he’s probably going to get it.
