'Let me bear the weight of everything': Rays pitching coach Kyle Snyder on the emotional toll of injuries
Injuries, to pitchers in particular, are an inevitable part of the game and part of the job for an MLB pitching coach
Drew Rasmussen was cruising. Against the mighty Yankees, he had allowed just a pair of hits while keeping his opponent off the board into the seventh inning. He was efficient, too, with a pitch count in the 70s. The Tampa Bay Rays popularized pulling the starting pitcher before he has the chance to get into trouble, but on this particular May night, manager Kevin Cash and pitching coach Kyle Snyder were prepared to send Rasmussen back out for the eighth, at least.
But the jumbotron at Yankee Stadium displays the velocity and break of each pitch, and as Rasmussen worked the final out of the seventh, Snyder noticed a dramatic drop in velo. He met his pitcher at the top step of the dugout and asked him how he felt.
Rasmussen admitted that something was wrong with his elbow. That was the last inning he will throw until August at the earliest.
An MRI the next day showed a strain of the flexor muscles near the elbow. It’s not clear if, after having endured two Tommy John surgeries in college, Rasmussen will need surgery to repair this, too.
“Anytime one of my guys gets hurt, they’re all the same. They're all awful. [Tyler] Glasnow in Chicago, Jeffrey [Springs] at home, Drew in New York. They’re all on the same level. It’s a very difficult part of the job,” Snyder said recently, rattling off some Rays starters who suffered significant injuries. “The two days following Drew, I was just not in a good spot.”
“When somebody gets hurt out there, part of him gets hurt, too,” the Rays’ last standing ace, Shane McClanahan, said of the team’s pitching coach.
'It hurts that much more when guys do fail'
In 2013, Bleacher Report ran a story entitled “The Alarming Increase in MLB Pitchers Who've Had Tommy John Surgery.” In 2016, Jeff Passan published an entire book about pitchers’ valuable but vulnerable arms and the injury epidemic that was afflicting them. In 2021, injuries were on the rise. In 2022, pitchers were getting hurt at nearly twice the rate of hitters, marking a new high in the ever-widening disparity. Already this year, there has been concern that the pitch clock — or else simply the continuation of well-established velocity trends — will cause pitcher injuries to spike further.
Keeping players on the field is the next frontier for baseball teams looking to get ahead. But until the human body can be fully optimized for health, injuries are part of the sport. And increasingly, being a pitching coach in particular means sending your guys into a battle that will land at least some of them on the operating table. If you care about them, it’s impossible to not be affected.
The Rays turn castoffs into Cy Young contenders. It’s a nifty formula that has kept them in contention despite payrolls a fraction of the size of those of their American League East competitors. But recently, even this latest, greatest iteration of the Rays has been beset by injuries to the rotation: Glasnow was sidelined to start this season just months after returning from Tommy John, Shane Baz will miss this whole year after getting T.J. last season, Jeffrey Springs needed T.J. less than a month into a transcendent, breakout season, and most recently, Rasmussen. That’s not including the relievers who have hit the injured list.
For Snyder, it translates to a lot of mental anguish.
“I do have some sleepless nights,” he said. “Because of the depth of the relationships that you create, it hurts that much more when guys do fail. I’m still in the process of learning how to best deal with that.”
The soft-spoken, 6-foot-8 Snyder was the seventh overall pick in the 1999 MLB Draft. His own pitching career was almost immediately marred by a Tommy John surgery that forced him to miss his first two full seasons of pro ball. Injuries limited the remainder of his time as a player before eventually forcing him to retire. In 2012, after a last-ditch surgery to see if he could extend his time on the mound a little longer fell short, the Rays hired him to be a pitching coach for their short-season A-ball affiliate.
“I realized that was the start of a new chapter of my life in baseball,” he said.
Snyder’s own experience helps him empathize when his pitchers have to overcome health setbacks. But that didn’t soften the blow when, a year into coaching, he watched for the first time as one of his guys blew out his elbow on the mound. “I remember it like it was yesterday,” Snyder said of the game in which Taylor Guerrieri tore his ulnar collateral ligament.
“Part of my job is to help them with their delivery. So when they fail physically, it’s tough not to be frustrated with yourself.”
'Let me bear the weight of everything'
By his own telling, Snyder is not prone to anxiety in his daily life. Perhaps that’s why he has the capacity to shoulder the concerns of an entire pitching staff. The Rays are renowned for putting pitchers in position to succeed by emphasizing the strengths of an individual arsenal. The team’s track record merits buy-in, and the results reinforce a pitcher’s confidence in the process — and in themselves. Confidence translates to conviction, which begets more success.
But since nothing is ever that simple, Snyder is there to absorb any doubts pitchers might have.
“He tells us, ‘Let me bear the weight of everything, and you don’t worry,’” McClanahan said.
“They play a game that’s worldwide. Their performance is known across the globe, and sometimes I feel like they press too much because of that,” Snyder said. “It’s more important for me to take that off them so they can more easily exhale, just be themselves. I want my players to realize that I’m constantly thinking about them, what’s in their best interest.”
That means getting to know them as people first and pitchers seconds. Snyder loves to talk parenting with the dads on his staff; he has encouraged McClanahan to separate what happens on the field from the rest of his life. When Springs’ season was cut short, Snyder saw it as an opportunity for the pitcher to buy a house near the ballpark and spend some time with his young son.
And it means shielding them from some of the granular feedback available in the modern game. Embedded in the data constantly being collected about pitchers today can be inexact signs of trouble to come. Snyder sees these indicators and, more often than not, swallows them.
'A really, really tough balance to strike'
In spite of — or perhaps because of — how much each one pains him, you have to wonder whether Snyder ever worries that he’s putting his pitchers in harm’s way. Maybe winning sometimes requires a UCL sacrifice or two.
“Yes,” he said without hesitation.
“And that’s a really difficult thing to accept. It’s gotten harder, I’ll admit, for myself. But I don't know what the alternative is. You want to get guys better — they want to get better. You don’t want to have the healthiest team or the healthiest pitching staff without pushing the limits of improving them. But that’s a really, really tough balance to strike. I do worry about that.”
The success pitchers find with the Rays changes their careers and their lives. Citing the way time in Tampa has turned guys’ careers around and pushed them to their fullest potential, Zach Eflin said, “for them to be so interested in me was just truly a blessing for me and my family.”
Last offseason, he signed the largest free-agent contract in Rays franchise history. Snyder was part of the contingent that courted Eflin, and just a few months into his time with the team, Eflin is effusive.
“I mean, I could go on and on about Snyder,” he said. “He cares far more about us as people than he does pitchers.”
Which makes it that much more difficult to watch them suffer.
“I do think at times it may work against me in terms of how it might affect my moods after they get hurt, things like that — things that I have to get over, psychological hurdles that I have to get beyond,” Snyder said. “But you have to get close to players. And that’s what makes it difficult. But I think it’s the right way to go about it.
“And I'll hopefully find a better way to keep them healthy so that they can get better and stay healthy, and I can sit in the dugout and watch them do their thing.”
