Snell: Erratic return is 'frustrating, for sure'

ST. PETERSBURG -- Reigning American League Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell returned to the mound Wednesday, but the left-hander said it was a “frustrating” outing.

Snell, who landed on the 10-day injured list with a fractured fourth right toe suffered April 14, struck out three and allowed three runs, two earned, over 3 1/3 innings in the 10-2 loss to the Royals at Tropicana Field.

“Frustrating, for sure,” said Snell, describing, his outing. “Happy to get back out there. Happy to feel it again. It’s just a game that I felt different. I don’t know. I felt good, but it was weird. Just frustrating.”

The left-hander said a good indicator that his outing wasn’t as going as well as he had hoped was when he spiked a couple of fastballs in the dirt, which is very uncharacteristic.

“It was something that I’m gonna have to go watch and see what I was really doing, but it was just different,” Snell said. “I noticed because when I’m spiking fastball, that’s just not -- I don’t do that. So that was frustrating.”

Snell threw 65 pitches, 42 for strikes. He threw 33 fastballs, 22 curveballs, four sliders and six changeups.

“Fastball came out good. I think all the pitches look good,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said. “Couple sequencing things that were a little uncharacteristic -- just got kind of repetitive with some pitches for whatever reason.”

There weren’t many positives from the loss, but the fact that Snell was able to throw 65 pitches and have four ups -- the beginning of each inning -- in his start meant he should be closer to a regular workload in his next start at Kansas City next week. His one clear mistake came in the third inning, when he allowed a solo home run to Whit Merrifield.

“We kind of prioritized the four ups,” Cash said. “The pitch count wasn’t -- we got to 60,65. Four ups -- Kyle [Snyder] really values the ups -- and that allows him to get to six or whatever you want for the next time.”

Perhaps the most important part of Wednesday’s game is that Snell didn’t have any noticeable issues with the fractured right toe.

“It’s fine,” Snell said. “I’ll be fine.”

Perez plays first
Michael Perez had never played first base in his professional career, but he got his first action at the position Wednesday.

“I kept thinking, ‘Don't hit it this way, don’t hit it this way,’” Perez laughed. “It felt weird.”

Over the past couple of weeks, Perez has been on the field pregame working on his defense at first base. With Joey Wendle going down with a fractured right wrist and Ji-Man Choi still not 100 percent with left calf tightness, Cash leaned on Perez to finish the game at first.

“We’ve been working on that, just in case,” Perez said. “I’ll work on my catching, and then every now and then I’ll go and take some grounders at first because of situations like this one.”