Ian Snell Demotes Himself to Triple-A

Early Thursday morning, Pirates general manager Neal Huntington defended struggling starter Ian Snell, saying that he would stay in the rotation and the team likes his stuff and just needs to work on a way to get him to be more consistent. Then, in the afternoon, Snell was demoted to Triple-A Indianapolis. More front office doublespeak and b.s.?

Turns out that's not the case this time, as Snell actually went to management Wednesday night and asked for a demotion. His performance to this point in 2009 -- a 2-8 record with a 5.36 ERA and a 1.62 WHIP -- warrants the demotion, but things are never cut and dry with Ian Snell.

For most of the season this year, Snell has been following bad starts with passive-aggressive remarks about how the "gameplan" wasn't working or how his catcher called a pitch he didn't like, or any number of things that involved pointing the finger back at anyone but No. 45. He made it clear that he didn't like the edict from new pitching coach Joe Kerrigan that the starters would work both halves of the plate (Snell prefers to live on the outside corner), and sometimes it almost felt like he was nibbling and pitching poorly to prove a point.

Snell's full comments (from the same PG link as above) indicate that he's pretty unhappy with just about everything in Pittsburgh:

His explanation basically came down to this: He sought a more positive environment: "Too much negativity. I want to be a positive person if I'm going to be here. I felt like I was going to be negative if I was going to be here, and I didn't want to ruin this team." He was asked to explain who actually made the call that he would go down: "I wasn't going to allow them to say what they want. I told them I wanted to go down. It's best for the team."

The last line probably points back to Huntington's remarks from this morning, and it kind of seems like this is Snell's roundabout way of demanding a trade. Because plenty of teams want a guy who refuses to listen to coaches and rather than work on his problems with the big-league staff, decides to demand a demotion to Triple-A.

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