Breaking down Robby Snelling's major league debut

MIAMI, FL - Friday's series opener against the Washington Nationals marked one of the most highly anticipated major league debuts in a long time, as Fish On First's No. 2 prospect Robby Snelling took the mound. Unfortunately, the Marlins offense went ice cold, including going 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position, falling by a final score of 3-2.

"He's made really tremendous strides since we've acquired him," said president of baseball operations Peter Bendix before the game. "It's a testament to Robby, how hard he works, the kind of competitor that he is. It's also a testament to our pitching group from top to bottom, Bill Hezel, our director of pitching, and everybody who's been involved in Robby's development. The great thing about Robby is he's really good right now. We're really excited about tonight, and he still has a lot of improvements that he can make. He has true top-of-the-rotation upside."

Usually, a starting pitcher keeps to himself before an outing and is not spoken to, but Snelling took a different approach, and has throughout his whole career. During Marlins batting practice, Snelling was hanging out, chatting up teammates and staff just outside the Marlins dugout. Part of his reasoning is to keep things "super light" and doesn't want his start day to feel different from any other day.

"Come in, try and chop it up with the guys," Snelling said. "My thing is kind of going out, and I was joking about the roof being closed today. I try and go out and roam around the outfield barefoot and walk around, and usually BP is not going on. There was no sun out today, so it's kind of like being able to just be outside of the clubhouse and interact with people. I don't want to feel isolated on any day. I want to treat it just like a normal day. Kind of gets my mind right."

In five innings of work, Snelling allowed three runs on five hits, four walks and only two strikeouts. All three runs he allowed came in the top of the first inning with two outs. An RBI single from CJ Abrams and then a two-run homer from Jacob Young. He finished the game throwing 86 pitches, with 54 landing for strikes. He averaged about 17 pitches per inning.

"For him to really navigate himself through five, maybe not the cleanest innings, but he really grinded well, showed a lot of moxie today," Marlins manager Clayton McCullough said.

Snelling's fastball topped out at 97.2 mph and averaged 95.3 mph. Although the velocity of the fastball was up, the usage was down. Snelling threw his fastball 51.4% of the time in Triple-A, and on Friday, he threw it 33% of the time, his second most used pitch.

"Everybody's geared up for 100 miles an hour up here," Snelling said. "I used my fastball in good spots where I needed to, and utilized my sinking fastball in really good spots to left-handed hitters. That got me a couple of groundouts tonight that I really needed."

Some of the positives to take away from a start like this was his curveball playing well, generating five whiffs, including All-Star James Wood for his first career strikeout. Snelling suspected that Wood would be sitting on his fastball in that situation.

"That guy is going to be geared up, expecting me to come out firing. and I was able to execute three really good pitches."

The curveball was Snelling's most-used pitch on the night (34% usage).

Another plus was landing 16 of 22 pitches for first-pitch strikes (73%), which he had told the media the day before he had been trying to work on at Triple-A.

Although Snelling had a lot of traffic on the bases, the defense behind him helped him, turning two double plays (one in the second and another in the fifth). In total, Snelling had six groundouts.

"Obviously, having runners on base as much as I did tonight, that's not what starting pitchers want," Snelling said. "Being able to continue to attack the zone, attack each hitter that stepped into the box, proud of myself about."

Catching Snelling was Joe Mack, who spent a lot of time with him in the minor league after being traded from the Padres. When asked what he will remember the most from his debut, immediately went to "throwing to Joe."

"Being able to go up through the minor leagues with him after I got traded, and create that dialogue with him and the relationship that I have, it's pretty cool."

The Marlins scored twice off former KBO pitcher Foster Griffin in the bottom of the first inning. Xavier Edwards, who was leading off, took Griffin deep to left-center. It marked his first home run as a right-handed hitter and his third career leadoff homer. Kyle Stowers reached first on a fielder's choice and Otto Lopez, who was at second, scored on a throwing error.

Unfortunately for the Marlins, Griffin was dominant after that. In seven innings of work, he allowed two runs (one earned) on four hits, one walk and struck out nine. His cutter generated nine whiffs, with four of his nine strikeouts coming on that pitch.

"We just didn't put a whole lot of good passes on (the cutter) and he was able to crowd a lot of guys there," McCullough said. "He's having a really nice season, been throwing the ball well. I think just that combo of trying to bully guys in with action running into 'em and then go play the changeup off of it has been successful. Dump enough curveballs early in count to steal some strikes. He pitched a good game."

With the loss, the Marlins drop to 17-22. Janson Junk gets the start on Saturday with a 4:10 pm first pitch.