Blake Snell's big night
On a night when the Padres needed a dominant pitching performance, they got the best they've ever seen from Blake Snell.
Wow, the San Diego Padres pitching is really on fire lately. I don’t know what has changed for that group, but this is definitely the best pitching the team has gotten all season.
Last night, the Padres called upon Blake Snell, Robert Suarez and Josh Hader to pitch a combined shutout and lead the team to a 1-0 victory over the future NL Central champion St. Louis Cardinals.
Snell is the one we’re going to focus on today, though. He was absolutely special last night. That might’ve been his best start since being traded to the Padres from the Tampa Bay Rays.
Not only did Snell go deep in the game (7.0 innings), but he remained (mostly) effective all the way up to pitch 117 (!). He also had a no-hitter going until the second-to-last batter he faced, when Albert Pujols snuck a groundball through the right side of the infield against the shift. Oh, and he finished with a ridiculous 13 strikeouts and only 2 walks.
Snell has now pitched in the same amount of games before and after the all-star break, so this is a fun split to look at:
The hilarious thing here is the strikeout rate being almost exactly the same and everything else being drastically better in the second half of the season. The most important stat here is the strikeouts-per-walk stat all the way to the right side.
Snell hasn’t changed anything, really. He’s just been walking guys less and being more aggressive in the strike zone with his nearly-unhittable stuff.
He did this same thing last season, pitching noticeably better after Larry Rothschild was fired as the team’s pitching coach, although not quite as dramatic:
If you compare the 2021 2nd half to the 2022 2nd half, one of the things that will stand out is the number of hits allowed. Snell’s giving up a lot more this season, last night aside, but he’s walking about half as many people. Strikeout numbers are roughly the same. He’s trusting his defense and moving away from the nibbling that sometimes gets him in trouble.
Blake Snell is pitching like one of the best pitchers in all of baseball right now, and he might not even be the hottest pitcher on the Padres. Just like the offense, which still did a lot last night despite not scoring many runs, the San Diego pitching staff has caught fire and I am excited to see how long they can collectively keep it up.
Special shoutout to a loud crowd that was actually excited to watch a great pitcher’s duel. The best moment of the night was, just before throwing what would be his last pitch, Blake Snell had to take his hat off in an effort to hear the PitchCom over the roar of the crowd. The crowd realized, quieted down, and Blake struck out his 13th batter while the crowd went nuts.
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