The Snell Game (Part 1)
5.1 innings. Comparisons to Koufax. Looking back at Blake Snell's definitive start in the 2020 World Series.
Tucked away in the Los Angeles Dodgers clubhouse at Globe Life Field in Texas, alone in front of a bank of video monitors, Chad Chop knew the trajectory of the 2020 World Series changed course in the bottom of the sixth inning.
The Dodgers replay analyst normally worked with a partner. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, he sat solo at a neutral site, the new home of the Texas Rangers,1 watching the Dodgers lineup flail and falter for five innings against Tampa Bay Rays starter Blake Snell.
“We just won the World Series,” Chop recalls saying out loud to himself when he saw Rays manager Kevin Cash walked to the mound and pointed to his right arm. “The second they pulled him, we knew we won the World Series. We were not scoring off Snell.”
Snell struck out Mookie Betts, the Dodgers leadoff hitter, twice in game 6. Corey Seager and Justin Turner, who followed Betts at the top of the Dodgers lineup, fared the same: two at-bats, two strikeouts. Chris Taylor was the only Dodger not to come up empty in his first two chances. He singled in the third.
The second single of the game came from catcher Austin Barnes. Before the 9-hole hitter could finish removing his shin guard and batting gloves at first base, Cash left the Tampa Bay dugout and motioned to the bullpen with his right arm.
Cash did not want Snell to face Betts a third time. Neither did Betts.
“Mookie looked at me with a kind of little smile,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said in his post-series press conference. “We were excited that Snell was out of the game.”
“They could’ve put Jesus on the mound, and we would’ve felt better,” Chop said. “They were taking the paintbrush away from Picasso in the middle of a masterpiece.”
The Win Probability chart from Baseball Savant looks forward by looking back. Major League Baseball explains that “the percentage is derived from the number of teams that faced a comparable situation in the past and went on to win the game.”
What counts as a comparable situation? Numbers. The game state in snapshot form. The score in this inning with these runners on base.2
What doesn’t count? Narrative. Need. A Cy Young winner throwing like a Hall of Famer against a lineup that played at a record-setting pace in the most unusual season in baseball history versus a revolution in pitching staff usage based on the third time being the charm for hitters.
The paintbrushes
“Blake could not have been better tonight,” Cash said in his post-series press conference. “The strikeouts, the pitch efficiency, the stuff. It was all really, really special.”
Let’s break down Cash’s positive assessment of Snell’s game 6 performance, the elements that made up the masterpiece.
The strikeouts: Snell struck out half of the 18 hitters he faced. Only Barnes and Taylor avoided ending an at-bat on strike three at least once.
The pitch efficiency: Snell averaged four pitches per batter. He walked none. The count reached 3-2 twice, when Snell struck out Max Muncy in the fourth and induced a groundout from Taylor in the fifth.
The stuff: Snell threw 73 pitches. The Dodgers swung and missed at 16, watched a called strike on 13, made weak contact or sent it foul on 17, and hit one hard.3 That is what Chop meant when he said they weren’t scoring off Snell.
35 four-seam fastballs: 8 whiffs, 8 called strikes, 8 foul balls. The Dodgers put Snell’s four-seamer in play zero times. Seager, Turner, Will Smith, Betts and Muncy struck out on Snell’s go-to pitch.
15 sliders: 4 whiffs, 1 called strike, 1 foul ball. Bellinger struck out. Barnes and Taylor grounded out. Barnes singled on Snell’s final pitch.4
15 curveballs: 3 whiffs, 2 called strikes. Muncy and Bellinger grounded out, AJ Pollock lined out and popped out. Taylor hit one 105.7 mph for a single — the one hard-hit ball.
8 changeups: 1 whiff, 2 called strikes. Betts started the game with a 2-2 strikeout. Smith flew out the only time it was put in play.
The Fox television broadcast alerted the audience that Snell was the first pitcher with nine strikeouts in the first four innings of a World Series game since Sandy Koufax in 1963. For 5.1 innings, protecting a one run lead and his team down 3-2 in the World Series, Blake Snell pitched comparably to one of the great lefthanded5 strikeout pitchers in baseball history.
“Personally, I felt Blake had done his job and then some,” Cash said. “Mookie coming around for the third time through, I value that. I totally respect and understand the questions that come with it.
“After Barnes hit the single, I didn’t want Mookie or Seager seeing Blake a third time.
“The thought was, ‘What’s the best way to secure a 1-0 lead at that point?’ And I felt it was going to Nick Anderson.”6
“Damn, I’m about to get pulled.”
In meetings before the World Series, Chop and the rest of the Dodgers staff heard from scouts who saw this situation coming. It may sound crazy, the scouts told them, but the strength of the Rays bullpen could become a strength for the Dodgers late in games, late in the series.
“Those guys were deteriorating,” Chop said.
Those Rays went 40-20 with three pitchers who functioned exclusively as starters (Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Charlie Morton) and two who averaged more than five innings per game (Glasnow and Ryan Yarbrough).7
The scouts projected that the Rays bullpen would wear down because of pitch metrics observed over the course of the American League Championship Series. The Rays built a 3-0 lead but needed a seventh game to fend off the Houston Astros.
In those first three wins, the Rays bullpen pitched 12 innings and allowed one earned run. In the first loss, the bullpen held Houston scoreless for the final two innings, but the offense didn’t catch up to the Astros. Tampa Bay used relievers for all 8.1 innings of game five, which ended when Houston shortstop Carlos Correa hit a home run off Nick Anderson with one out in the bottom of the 9th.
The Tampa Bay bullpen covered five innings and gave up four runs in game 6. In the final win, Rays relievers pitched the last 3.1 innings, and Anderson gave up two more runs.
In the first three games of the World Series against the Dodgers, Tampa Bay used relievers for 12.2 innings. They gave up four runs but got tagged with neither of the losses as Los Angeles took a 2-1 lead. Game 4 was a nine-inning bullpen relay, and Brett Phillips rescued the relief core, who gave up seven runs, with a two-out, two-RBI, walk-off single. But in the game 5 loss that put the Rays one loss away from elimination, the bullpen allowed zero runs in four innings.
Bear with us, the Dodgers scouts said. Their relievers are still good, but they aren’t as sharp due to overuse. This analysis seeped into Los Angeles hitters’ meetings and fed into the immeasurable power of belief.
And that is why Mookie Betts could smile when Nick Anderson entered the game.
Anderson was not an emergency fix or a reaction to a dip from Snell. The elite relief pitcher, who gave up six runs in 41.2 innings since arriving in Tampa Bay at the trade deadline in 2019, was throwing in the Rays bullpen while Snell started the bottom of the sixth — before Barnes knocked a 1-1 slider into shallow center field.
“I gave up the hit strictly because my mindset switched when I saw Nick warming up,” Snell told C.C. Sabathia and Ryan Ruocco on The Ringer Podcast in January. “The whole time out there, I’m like, ‘Damn, I’m about to get pulled.’
One pitch to Pollock and three to Barnes. Cash came onto the field. Snell shook his head as he handed Cash the ball. The manager patted the departing starter on the back, and Anderson came in from the bullpen.
The Times Through the Order Penalty has been part of widespread baseball consciousness for about a decade. It existed before that. Mitchel Lichtman helped write a book called “The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball” in 2006 and posted about his sabermetric research on Baseball Prospectus in 2013.
Here’s the basic idea, originally in the book and reposted online: “As the game goes on, the hitter has a progressively greater advantage over the starting pitcher.”
The large-sample size, analytical view shows Betts gaining the advantage over Snell because batters reach base more frequently if they face the same pitcher multiple times in one game. That doesn’t mean Betts should have expected a hit off Snell.
“I’m good. Let me go.”
Blake Snell wanted to face Mookie Betts a third time.
“A couple nights before, I was scouting this team so hard,” Snell told The Ringer in January. “I would see them pass in the hotel. I was just watching how they walk. Are they confident? How do they look? How do they talk?”
“I was on everything. I was like, ‘I’m gonna beat these guys. I’m not losing to them.’”
Snell also knew the Rays bullpen had been carrying the team in the postseason and a day of rest would help them be as fresh as possible for game 7.
“I know our bullpen is taxed,” Snell said, “so I know I gotta go nine. And I even told Cash, ‘I’m good. Let me go.’”
During the 2020 regular season, shortened to 60 games during the pandemic, Anderson appeared in 19 games, pitched 16.1 innings, allowed eight baserunners and gave up one earned run.
During the 2020 postseason, Anderson appeared in 10 games, pitched 14.2 innings, allowed 20 baserunners and gave up nine earned runs. Cash admitted that the 2020 postseason was a challenging run for his bullpen ace, who he described as the best reliever in baseball over the past two seasons.
Betts double on Anderson’s third pitch, a 2-0 fastball, after the first two sailed wide of the strike zone.8 Shortstop Willy Adames slid to retrieve the ball, kicking up chalk and smearing the foul line, and fired to third to stop Barnes 90 feet from tying the game. Betts celebrated at second, then brought his shin guard to first base coach George Lombard while Tampa Bay pitching coach Kyle Snyder talked to Anderson through a mask on the mound.
Seager swung over a curveball on Anderson’s fourth pitch. His fifth, another curveball,9 bounced in the dirt and skipped away from catcher Mike Zunino. Barnes scored and Betts moved to third. On Anderson’s sixth pitch, a third curveball that dove down and away, Seager pulled a grounder to first. 1B Ji-Man Choi threw home without hesitation, but Betts dove before Zunino could start the tag, then jumped up to pump his fist five times. 2-1 Dodgers.
Snell watched all six pitches from the dugout. He chewed gum and spoke to teammates, his face mostly hidden behind a mask.
The biggest Win Probability swing in the game happened in six pitches. It’s easy to question Cash’s decision. The double looks bad, but Barnes didn’t score until a curveball let him in. Barnes finished in the 44th percentile for sprint speed in 2020. Betts was in the 87th. Choi would’ve had a much better chance if Barnes tried to score on Seager’s grounder, if he would’ve gone home at all.
There’s always what-ifs, but the margin between Cash’s move working to hold the Dodgers scoreless in the sixth and Los Angeles’s confidence turning into a comeback is thinner than whether pulling Snell was analytically correct or historically premature.
The first question in Snell’s postgame press conference inquired about his surprise or disappointment at being pulled. He responded that he was disappointed and upset. He skipped surprised.
He also skipped criticism of the pitching change or Cash.
“He’s a hell of a manager,” Snell said, “so I’m not going to question him.”
Snell indicated he had a plan to adjust his strategy to keep the Dodgers off balance as he made more rounds through their lineup:
“I felt so confident in how I adjusted through seeing them a second time, and what I was going to be able to do a third time. I believed a lot in myself and what I did to hopefully see them a third time through, and a fourth time if needed. I wanted to go that whole game. Burn the tank and see how far I could go.”
Snell congratulated the Dodgers on earning their championship and indicated he would focus on preparing for next season. The Rays traded Snell to the San Diego Padres two months later.
Snell is currently a free agent after three seasons in San Diego. He won the 2023 National League Cy Young. He averaged just under 16 outs per start for the Padres, the same number he recorded in his World Series performance that earned comparisons to Sandy Koufax.
Today, Snell posted the eyes emoji on his Instagram story, so he may be joining his third team soon. Looking at his career arc made me realize that Snell’s next contract will take him to territory Koufax didn’t reach: pitching at age 31 and beyond. The pair of lefthanders intersected across generations in World Series starts, and there’s more to unpack about what the similarities and differences say about what we now expect from championship-caliber starting pitchers.
In Part 2, we’ll dissect the rest of Koufax’s game 1 start in 1963 and zoom out to look more broadly at the model that guided Cash’s assessment that Snell did his job. We’ll look at World Series starts in the three season finales since Tampa Bay traded Snell, and, hopefully, we’ll know where he will pursue a return to the postseason in 2024.
The only stadium to host World Series games not including the team that calls it home.
It also includes the phrase “run environment,” which helps limit the number of past results to include games taking place in similar conditions. We’re not looking at all of baseball history in that 61%. Think more recent results with similar conditions, like the past decade or so.
“Hard-hit” is not subjective. From Baseball Savant: “Statcast defines a 'hard-hit ball' as one hit with an exit velocity of 95 mph or higher.” And while we’re here, “stuff” as a baseball term is the most specific usage of the noun form of this word. It’s pitch arsenal and quality, the characteristics of each ball’s movement from pitcher’s hand to catcher’s glove.
The third highest exit velocity off Snell, but only the third above 90 mph.
Was Picasso lefthanded? I looked this up, and it’s a combo of rumors (both), claims (lefty?) and video evidence of him painting with his right hand.
This is about that asterisk in the table above. When Cash replaced Snell with Anderson, Barnes was on first. Since Barnes singled off Snell, he would count towards Snell’s final stat line if he came around to score. This table reflects the limbo stat after Snell left, when everyone watching was thinking about Sandy Koufax getting pulled early in a masterpiece.
That’s right. Snell is not on this small list. We’ll get to that more in Part 2.
Joe Buck said “Hard hit and fair down the line!” Technically, no. Betts ripped the pitch 90.7 mph between the bag and 3B Joey Wendle. But that’s why we’re here. The analytics say it wasn’t hard hit, but it looked like it and felt like it.
Buck called this a slider on the broadcast, but I’m defaulting to Baseball Savant’s curveball description based on recorded movement.