The A’s have outrighted Kirby Snead off their 40-man roster, as per the left-hander’s MLB.com profile page. Snead can’t reject the assignment to Triple-A since he doesn’t have enough Major League service time and because this is his first outright, but he is probably likely to become a minor league free agent.
Snead came to the Athletics as part of the Matt Chapman trade package from the Blue Jays in March 2022, and he has a 5.59 ERA over 56 1/3 relief innings for the A’s over his two seasons in the organization. Only 11 2/3 of those innings came in 2023, as a shoulder sprain suffered during Spring Training kept him on the 60-day injured list until the end of June. Snead didn’t appear in a game on the big league roster until August 1, and he made 15 appearances before being optioned to Triple-A in early September.
In the small sample size of 64 total MLB innings to his name, Snead has a 17.2% strikeout rate, 10.1% walk rate, and 42.7% grounder rate. These uninspiring numbers aren’t nearly as solid as Snead’s K% and groundball rates in the minors, and Snead’s 3.39 ERA over 273 1/3 minor league frames is also encouraging, even if the results haven’t been there with Triple-A Las Vegas in the last two seasons. Snead’s control in particular has become an issue, calling back to some problems he had earlier in his career in issuing free passes.
Assuming Snead hits the open market, the 29-year-old will catch on somewhere with a team looking for left-handed relief depth, or Snead could perhaps be a candidate to explore his options with a team overseas. A reunion with Oakland seems possible, as the A’s figure to be looking for inexpensive relief options and might pivot back to a familiar face.
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