Kirby Snead, Breakout Candidate

The 2022 season wasn't particularly kind to Kirby Snead in his first season with the Oakland Athletics, but the numbers suggest he could be due to break out in 2023.

After the lockout ended, but before the season began, the A's found the time to trade another fan-favorite third baseman to the Toronto Blue Jays. This time it was Matt Chapman headed north. 

If you look at the trade package, the name that is generally listed last is Kirby Snead's. Gunnar Hoglund was the headliner, Zach Logue and Kevin Smith were nice complimentary pieces, and Snead was the throw-in. 

If you look at Snead's stat line from this season, there isn't a ton to be giddy about. He finished the campaign with a 5.84 ERA, a 1.75 WHIP,  and walked 10.5% of the batters he faced. That's all true. But there is still reason to believe he can turn things around in a big way next year.

His expected ERA (xERA) was a full run lower at 4.43. Expected stats don't mean better results in and of themselves, but they can give you a glimpse into what kind of contact he was giving up. A pitcher with a four and a half ERA on a rebuilding team is a little easier to stomach, too. 

Looking over Snead's Baseball Savant page, you can see that his pitches have a lot of life on them. His fastball ranks fifth in baseball in horizontal movement. His sinker is ranked third in baseball in horizontal movement. His changeup ranks 40th in vertical movement, and seventh in horizontal movement. 

That arsenal could be deadly. 

There are two problems, however. The first is that he gave up 11.3 hits per nine innings this season, and the second is that he walked 4.4 batters per nine. My guess here is that he was trying to gain control over some of the action he has on his pitches, but overcorrected and found himself living in the zone too much. He also found himself behind after the first pitch more than a third of the time, only getting a first-pitch strike in 64.3% of plate appearances. 

The trick for 2023 would be to get guys to still swing, but at pitches out of the strike zone. That would mean trusting the movement he possesses and letting them ride off the plate. Snead got batters to swing outside of the zone just 26.6% of the time, which would rank him 189th out of 228 qualified pitchers. 

The other option, and an easier fix, would be to mess around with his pitch mix again next season. This year he threw his sinker 16.5% more than he did in a small sample with the Blue Jays a year ago. The results weren't great. 

In 2021, opponents hit .222 against his sinker with an expected batting average (xBA) of .297. This year, with the increased usage, batters hit .347 with an xBA of .319. The sinker was also his most-used pitch. Just looking at the numbers, the sinker hasn't been a great offering for him so far early in his career.

The one pitch that has given him success in both Oakland and Toronto is the fastball, which he threw ten percent less in 2022. The opposition hit just .143 with a .150 xBA against the heater this season, and it could be worth seeing if throwing a few more next year is worth looking into to limit the usage of the sinker at least a little. 

The fastball also had his highest whiff% at 29.5, and he ranked in the 90th percentile in fastball spin. It's a good pitch. Snead only threw five of them to left-handers all season, and didn't toss lefties any changeups, basically making himself a two-pitch pitcher against left-handers. 

In looking at his heat map over at Brooks Baseball, he also didn't attack the top of the zone much, throwing just nine percent of his pitches in the upper third of the strike zone. I'm not a pitching expert by any means, but to cut the strike zone down and then also not throw two of your pitches against lefties feels like you would be making the hitter's job a little easier for them by allowing them to focus on a particular area, and giving them one of two pitches to be on the lookout for. 

The final point that I'll make today is that the A's obviously believe in Kirby Snead. Even with all of the roster churning that the front office did--heck, 64 players wore the green and gold in Oakland this season, including 34 rookies!--Kirby Snead was still on the big-league roster the majority of the season. There were other options available. They didn't just need a second lefty in the bullpen. They already had A.J. Puk, Sam Moll, Sam Selman, Jared Koenig, and Zach Logue as bullpen options for much of the year. 

The A's wanted him to get big league playing time, and in 2023 that experience could pay off. 

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