Rays' Snell gets shelled by college team, calls fastball command 'crap'

A reigning Cy Young winner going up against college bats seems like a mismatch. It was on Tuesday, but not in the way you'd expect.

The Tampa Bay Rays sent Blake Snell to the mound against USF for an exhibition game, but the 2018 AL Cy Young winner failed to make it out of the first inning.

He allowed two runs on two hits, one walk, and one hit batter. Barely 50 percent of Snell's 29 pitches were thrown for strikes.

"It's honestly a game that's a lose-lose," Snell said postgame, according to Eduardo A. Encina and Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times. "What do I win out of it? Nothing. What do you get out of it? Nothing. You can only lose. That's the mindset, that was how I approached it.

"I didn't approach it as every team that I face - 'You have no shot, why are you stepping in the box?' So for me to even think like that, I was upset with."

That said, Snell treated Tuesday's performance as a learning experience. "It's for me to learn, grow, build," he said, according to Josh Tolentino of The Athletic. While he was happy with his offspeed stuff, the 26-year-old admitted he was "disappointed in the fastball command because it was really crap."

Snell posted a sterling 1.89 ERA and 2.95 FIP over 31 starts in his third full season in the majors last year, leading a young Rays club that finished with 90 wins. The young ace struck out 31.6 percent of batters he faced and led all of baseball with 21 wins.