I like Taverez for the ground ball although Snyder has shown in the past that he can eat some innings. Last year he had games where he would start, get through 4 innings then crap out. Middle relief is supposed to either keep you in the game or clean up the mess so the rest of the pen doesn’t wind up pitching in games like last night. Frankly I think Corey deserved the nod based solely on performance but Tito is always loyal to his guys first.
Snyder pitched two innings of scoreless ball against the Devil Rays this year after Papelbon’s blown save, which allowed the Red Sox to annihilate the back end of the Devil Rays pen and win the game ultimately. Maybe Theo/Tito liked that.
We needed a guy who can go more than one inning. Tavarez and Snyder are both former starters so they can be stretched out for 2 or more innings. Corey can’t go for more than 1. We already have Gagne and Lopez to pitch single innings in low leverage moments of the game. It’s also possible that Theo/Tito weren’t sure that the Corey “small sample size” was legit— that they just caught lightning in a bottle for that period.