Let’s speak about Blake Snell, pitching weirdo.
Is it factor to be a pitching weirdo? For essentially the most half. We’ll dive into that, nevertheless it’s vital to know that this isn’t a time period to throw round evenly. There are good pitchers and dangerous pitchers, nice pitchers and terrible pitchers, nevertheless it takes rather a lot to be a pitching weirdo.
You need to be 6-foot-10, left-handed and at last determine learn how to throw strikes in your 30s. You need to battle with accidents for seven years, throwing a median of twenty-two innings per season in that stretch with a 5.41 ERA, solely to determine it out if you’re 35 and have a wonderful profession over the following decade. You need to be born with no UCL in your pitching elbow, which turns you from a first-round prospect right into a fringe minor leaguer right into a Cy Younger Award-winning knuckleballer.
It’s not about being a Cy Younger Award winner or an All-Star; it’s about doing one thing that nooooooobody else is doing.
Snell is a pitching weirdo. It begins together with his curveball, which could be the perfect pitch in baseball proper now, which implies it’s a minimum of within the 64-pitch bracket of the perfect pitch in baseball historical past. Possibly it’s within the NIT. Nevertheless it’s up there. Have a look at this danged curveball:
Blake Snell, Filthy 81mph Curveball…and Sword. ⚔️
seventh Okay pic.twitter.com/dSF63QoZdv
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) August 12, 2023
You may undergo the entire Blake Snell Pitching Ninja feed you probably have the time (beneficial). Snell’s curveball is a supremely nasty pitch. It’s made even nastier by his fastball, which is likely one of the hottest four-seamers from a left-hander within the sport. His curve could be the wipeout pitch, however his fastball is a co-conspirator.
You may need an thought of the “however” that’s about to return. Based on Baseball Savant, Snell was the one hundredth percentile when it got here to stopping runs (and for breaking-ball effectiveness). He was within the 4th percentile when it got here to stroll price. That’s not nice. That alone makes him a pitching weirdo.
It goes deeper, although. Snell is a fountain of walks, sure, and the fountain will typically spill over and make your socks moist — one of many worst fates identified to mankind — however even his walks are constructed totally different. So are his strikeouts.
Begin with one of many strangest pairings you’ll ever see from a high-strikeout pitcher. Snell has a 31.5 % strikeout price, which is best than 94 % of his friends. He has a 98th-percentile whiff price, which signifies that when batters swing at his pitches, they miss greater than they do in opposition to nearly every other pitcher. This mix of strikeouts and whiffs isn’t the unusual one. That’s the peanut butter and jelly of pitching, and it’s why he has two Cy Younger Awards.
Snell can also be the perfect in baseball at making hitters miss by a lot. David Adler of MLB.com took benefit of the brand new StatCast expertise that measures a hitter’s bat path and wrote concerning the greatest whiffs of the yr. Rodolfo Castro’s swing in opposition to a Snell curveball was the worst of the season, together with his bat lacking the ball by an unbelievable 2.6 ft.
by way of MLB.com
Simply missed it.
This leads us to the bizarre half. Snell’s chase price — how typically he will get batters to swing at pitches out of the strike zone — is way worse than the league common. Snell was under Sean Manaea when it got here to getting hitters to chase. He was under Tristan Beck. He was under Ty Blach.
Right here’s a scatter plot of each pitcher with 100 innings or extra, with Snell represented by the orange dot.
There’s just one pitcher who’s weirder on this regard, represented by the dot that’s immediately left to Snell. That will be Shohei Ohtani, which undoubtedly makes this essentially the most fascinating article that mentions him this week.
How do you get a pitcher who is comparatively dangerous at getting hitters to chase and get to a strikeout price like Snell’s? You’ve most likely figured a part of it out already: by being extremely environment friendly at getting batters to overlook even when the pitch is within the strike zone. Solely Spencer Strider and Joe Ryan are higher at getting batters to swing via strikes. It might observe, then, that if Snell may throw extra strikes and had any semblance of command, he would have a equally outlandish strikeout price as Strider’s.
Besides that’s not the tip of it. A few months in the past, FanGraphs revealed an article with a beguiling title of “Blake Snell Has Higher Command Than You Assume.” The entire article is value studying, however one of many greatest takeaways is that Snell is elite at avoiding the center of the strike zone together with his fastball. This isn’t proof that he doesn’t know the place the ball goes, however proof that he does. Two of the ultimate sentences within the article describe the philosophy effectively:
Regardless of the walks, possibly even due to them, Snell is adept at run prevention. He has really feel for conserving his pitches in locations the place he gained’t get burned too badly.
We already checked out how Jordan Hicks can nonetheless be efficient when he throws fastballs proper down the center, and batters have hit .256 with a .359 slugging proportion in opposition to him on the pitches that Baseball Savant defines as being within the “coronary heart” of the plate. Snell is extra of your typical pitcher when he’s within the coronary heart of the zone, and batters are hitting .270 with a .478 slugging proportion on pitches there. He may need even been fortunate final season, because the anticipated slugging proportion primarily based on launch angle and exit velocity was .635.
The excellent news is that Snell threw fewer of these mid-heart fastballs than all however two pitchers final season. It’ll assist to have a look at the place all of his pitches are going, and for context, that is how MLB defines the phrases I’m about to make use of:
Greg Maddux’s nickname ought to have been The Shadow Lord. Missed alternative.
Right here’s the place Snell threw all of his pitches final season (all of it provides as much as 100%):
The place Blake Snell threw his pitches
Pitch | Coronary heart (rank) | Shadow (rank) | Chase (rank) | Waste (rank) |
---|---|---|---|---|
Fastball |
11.7% (57) |
23% (40) |
11.9% (19) |
2.1% (44) |
Curve |
2.5% (29) |
5.8% (20) |
5.1% (11) |
6.3% (1) |
Slider |
1.9% (46) |
3.9% (45) |
4% (38) |
3.4% (14) |
Change |
2.9% (20) |
9.2% (13) |
5.1% (17) |
1.2% (31) |
I set the qualifier for two,500 complete pitches to ensure no relievers bought in, however the totally different repertoires of the totally different starters imply that the ranks will all be out of various totals. 59 pitchers certified within the fastball row, 46 who certified within the curveball row, 55 who certified within the slider row and 59 who certified within the changeup row.
It’s an interesting desk for a couple of causes. Snell isn’t throwing his fastball for strikes down the center, and that’s advantageous as a result of he doesn’t need to. The pitch he throws essentially the most out of any of them is a fastball on the fringes of the strike zone, inside or out. That’s command! Snell has command together with his fastball! In a approach! It additionally reveals how tough Snell could be for a batter who patiently waits for errors, as he doesn’t throw very many meatballs in any respect with any of his pitches.
That’s an incomplete desk with out exhibiting how typically he’s lacking bats when he’s throwing these pitches, although. So right here’s the identical desk with swing-and-miss charges:
The place Blake Snell is lacking bats
Pitch | Coronary heart Okay% (rank) | Shadow Okay% (rank) | Chase Okay% (rank) | Waste Okay% (rank) |
---|---|---|---|---|
Fastball |
13.7% (23) |
25.3% (40) |
11.8% (52) |
0% (n/a) |
Curve |
20% (7) |
55.4% (1) |
73.7% (13) |
93.5% (8) |
Slider |
16.7% (14) |
54.8% (2) |
73.3% (14) |
16.7% (47) |
Change |
9.1% (21) |
23.4 (24) |
14.8 (51) |
25% (26) |
That curveball, man. That freaking curveball.
If there’s a supplementary takeaway from these tables, it could be that Snell shouldn’t be scared to overlook with sliders within the strike zone. Batters don’t provide on the sliders approach out of the zone, they usually miss his shadow sliders greater than nearly anybody else’s in baseball. Batters additionally aren’t sitting on his meatball sliders, for apparent causes. Too nervous concerning the curve.
The primary takeaway, although, is that Snell buries curveballs as a result of it really works. Solely Charlie Morton is even near him in the case of curves within the waste zone, however Morton misses far fewer bats. As a result of Snell is profitable even with these waste curves, he’ll maintain making an attempt to hit these shadow zones, and people pitches work out even higher relative to the remainder of the league.
Lengthy article brief: Each different pitch that Snell throws, on common, is a fastball or a changeup within the shadow or chase zone, and people pitches are his worst in the case of swings and misses. They don’t do a lot good, a minimum of within the speedy sense, and that’s the place the disconnect between his chase price and his strikeout price comes from. However the concept that he throws a fastball and changeup practically half the time is what makes his curveball so efficient, even when it bounces. It doesn’t matter the place he throws that sucker; it really works higher than most pitchers may ever dream of.
That is the place the philosophy comes into play. Snell’s objective is to not give batters hittable fastballs. It’s to not give them hittable curveballs. If he wants a get-it-in pitch, it’s his changeup. His objective is to mess the batters up so badly with all of those different pitches that they’ll screw themselves into the bottom on the following curveball he throws that’s remotely near the zone. If a batter doesn’t take him up on the provide, that’s advantageous. Subsequent batter. Begin from scratch.
I’m not saying it makes Snell an ideal pitcher, or that he has every part found out. If he actually does have extra command than his stroll price suggests, there must be a solution to leverage his pitches within the strike zone extra and keep away from three-ball counts as a lot as doable. Which may assist him discover the wild frontier of the “late innings.”
The very best comparability for Snell {that a} Giants fan can admire, although, is Ryan Vogelsong with nuclear stuff. Vogelsong walked 3.1 batters per 9 innings with the Giants (the second time), which was greater than the league common, nevertheless it wasn’t as a result of he couldn’t hit the strike zone. It was as a result of he didn’t need to throw strikes, for essentially the most half. His sport was grind, grind, grind. Power the hitter to make errors, not the opposite approach round.
Snell’s nuclear stuff permits him to do this and wriggle out of much more jams. Sufficient to win a Cy Younger Award or two. It gained’t be essentially the most watchable repertoire you’ve ever seen. Why, it would even be extremely demanding. Giants baseball … torture? Oh, you guess.
It really works most of the time, although. Welcome to the world of Blake Snell, pitching weirdo.
(Picture of Blake Snell: Sean M. Haffey / Getty Pictures)