Snider’s return and Castillo’s demotion first sign KC Royals will have revolving door

Kansas City Royals right-handed relief pitcher Collin Snider was all set to pitch in front of his family for the club’s Triple-A affiliate, the Omaha Storm Chasers, in Louisville, Kentucky, just a few hours from where he grew up in Nashville, Tennessee.

His parents, grandparents, his wife and her family were in Louisville to see him pitch on Friday. Instead, Snider got word that he was heading back to the majors. The Royals officially made that roster move on Saturday, when they recalled Snider and optioned right-hander Max Castillo to Triple-A.

Snider did get to have lunch with his family before he made the trip to Florida, but the abrupt change of plans and the roster move figures to be the norm for the Royals in the final month and a half of the season as they continue to evaluate their young players and work within roster limitations.

Castillo, who started on Thursday night, remained with the club in Florida on Saturday. He’ll go to Triple-A and continue starting. He’s expected to return to the majors again after the mandatory 15 days he must spend in the minors after being sent down.

“When you only have one pitcher that you can bring up in September and a number of young pitchers that we have faith in and want to see more of, it’s going to be (interesting),” Royals manager Mike Matheny said. “What we have right now — if you look at it on paper — it’s a matrix of guys going up, guys going down.

“Castillo just did a really nice job for us. Instead of having him sit for five days, we’ll take advantage of the arm that we can put in the pen. We’ll have Collin here for a while. These guys know that it’s just going to be kind of shifted in and out for a while so we can get as many looks as we can and still get the starts that we need to have.”

The spot in the starting rotation Castillo filled, created by Brad Keller’s move to the bullpen, will not come up again until Tuesday.

The Triple-A rotation currently includes left-hander Austin Cox, right-hander Jonathan Heasley, right-hander Jackson Kowar and left-hander Drew Parrish. Heasley and Kowar have both pitched in the majors this season, Kowar made his appearances in relief while Heasley started.

In years past, MLB rosters expanded to include all members of the 40-man roster in September. But starting last year, MLB and the MLB Players Association agreed to limit the roster size in the season’s final month. The Royals will have just two additional roster spots (28 total players) beginning Sept. 1.

“It’s going to be a little different looking than what we’d normally do,” Matheny said.

Snider’s ‘reset’

Snider made the Opening Day roster out of spring training and made his major-league debut in extra innings of the second game of the season. He entered his first MLB game with a “ghost” runner on second base and earned the win.

Snider, 26, set a franchise record by stranding 19 consecutive inherited runners to begin his career, the fourth-longest streak since 1957 according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

During his previous time in the majors, he entered more than half (52%) of his outings with at least one runner already on base.

Between adjusting to pitching in the majors, the workload volume and being in high-leverage situations so often, Snider needed a bit of a mental and physical “reset.”

“(It was) kind of just like catching my breath,” Snider said. “Evaluating what I had done to this point, knowing that I’d had success. I’d struggled a little bit at the end before I got sent down. But knowing I’d had success at the highest level and just kind of reminding myself and getting back to ‘I can do this.’”

The 6-foot-4, rookie right-hander performed stellarly in his first 12 appearances. He posted a 2.70 ERA with a .212 batting average against, no home runs allowed, nine strikeouts and four walks in 10 innings.

However, the results weren’t nearly as positive over the last month before he was sent down on June 10.

In his last 15 appearances, he recorded an ERA of 12.27 with a .396 batting average against, two home runs allowed, three strikeouts and seven walks in 11 innings.

“The main thing was just getting back to myself from the beginning of the year,” Snider said of his focus in Triple-A. “Just staying more on the attack with hitters and knowing that I had good stuff and getting my stuff more over the plate, more consistently.”

Initially upon returning to the minors, Snider endured early struggles. He allowed nine earned runs in six appearances (5 1/3 innings) for Omaha in June.

In his last 15 appearances at Triple-A, he registered a 2.08 ERA.

“My last couple weeks, I felt like I’ve been doing really well there,” Snider said. “Sometimes the box score looked really good. Sometimes it wasn’t. But my in-game pitcher-versus-hitter results were good. I was getting a lot of weak contact, a lot of ground balls, a lot of quick outs. So I was able to throw multiple innings with a low pitch count, which is valuable at this level as well.”