Is Blake Snell okay?

The San Diego Padres were hoping for a second ace when they traded for Blake Snell. Why has he gotten off to such a rough start?

When the San Diego Padres traded one of their top pitching prospects (Luis Patiño) to the Tampa Bay Rays this offseason, a lot of people freaked out. Patiño was supposed to be on a “do not trade” list for the Padres, at least he was at the 2020 trade deadline, and some thought his potential was so great that he should’ve stayed on that list.

My argument for the trade was a pretty simple one. While I hadn’t seen much of Blake Snell, he won the 2018 AL Cy Young Award and was coming off a dominant performance against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series. This was a big time player who showed up in big spots. “He’s exactly who you’re hoping Luis Patiño turns into,” I said.

Trading a 21 year old who might some day be at Blake Snell’s level, no guarantees, for Blake Snell seemed like a no-brainer to me. And throwing in a couple of low-level prospects, along with Francisco Mejia (whose Padres career was a failure), seemed like a fine price to pay to get an ace.

Padres GM A.J. Preller followed up that move by trading for Yu Darvish and Joe Musgrove, as well, completely revamping the San Diego starting rotation in the process.

While Darvish has been fantastic as the team’s #1 starter, and Joe Musgrove threw the first no hitter in Padres history, Blake Snell hasn’t quite lived up to the hype. As a matter of fact, Blake Snell has been pretty bad.

Raw numbers

To simplify, only Chris Paddack has been a worse starting pitcher than Blake Snell for the Padres this year. And Paddack is averaging more innings pitched per start and a lower WHIP, so it almost evens out.

Dig a little deeper and you’ll see that Blake Snell’s FIP really stands out as bad against his teammates, and his WHIP leads the rotation as well. You won’t be shocked to find out these are some of the worst numbers Snell has ever put up in his career.

The closest season to what he’s doing in 2021 is what he did in 2017, the year before he won the Cy Young, but I like this chart for another reason: It helps us identify what the problem is.

Blake Snell is walking too many batters. His BB/9 rate is more than twice as high as any other starter the Padres have. It’s the highest of his career and about twice as high as what he put up with the Tampa Bay Rays over the last three seasons.

Lost control?

28-year old pitchers with a Cy Young trophy at home don’t generally lose control of their pitches for long stretches of time. That’s not a great explanation of what’s happening here. So, what is it?

Let’s start here. Blake is throwing his fastball less than he ever has and throwing his slider more than he ever has, more than twice as much as that 2018 season. It’s easy to blame Larry Rothschild for that, but you can see it ticking up dramatically last season already. This is a decision that was made before he came to San Diego.

The fastball has almost become a “get me over” pitch for Snell. He will throw it down the middle of the strike zone to start at-bats against patient hitters he knows aren’t swinging, and he’ll also throw it when he falls behind in the count because it’s the closest thing he has to pinpoint control on any of his pitches.

Snell’s biggest issue seems to be that he can’t throw his slider, which might honestly be his most unhittable pitch, for strikes. Look at the chart above and you’ll see where it typically lands. It’s close to the strike zone but almost never in the strike zone.

Do a quick comparison to 2018 and…

The fastball is less predictable, it looks like he could get guys out throwing it towards the top of the strike zone, but the most important thing here is the slider. He threw it less, although it was equally devastating, but you could see that it was landing just on the inside of the zone instead of just on the outside.

Sometimes, pitching is both that simple and that difficult. It really is a game of inches. And this is good news for Blake Snell, I think! If he can make whatever adjustment is needed to get the slider to start behaving again, he can return to being an elite-level pitcher.

The bad news? This slider thing has been a problem for a while. And I’m not sure why he decided to throw the slider more when he hasn’t been able to locate it since 2018.

2019

2020

This might be fine for a putaway pitch, but as your second most thrown pitch? This is asking for trouble. This is asking for walks.

Now, I’m all for patience. If the Padres and Snell want him to keep throwing the slider, which is a terrifying pitch for hitters, that’s fine. If they think him throwing it in games is the only way he’s going to find the feel for it and be able to get it back in the strike zone, I trust them. They’re the experts.

However, if a couple of months from now, he’s still getting in constant trouble as a result, they may need to reevaluate. It’s possible he won’t ever be able to throw the slider for strikes consistently and that 2018 was just dumb luck, but that would likely end up with him never being quite the pitcher we all thought the Padres were getting in that trade. It would also be strange considering how consistently he can get it to land in the same spot, just outside the strike zone.

Oh, and before you ask, of course the Tampa Bay Rays are getting absolutely brilliant performance from Luis Patiño (1.54 ERA) and Francisco Mejia (134 OPS+), and are even seeing early returns from Blake Hunt (.980 OPS in high-A).

With Blake Snell and Tommy Pham on the Padres roster, I am here to say maybe don’t trade with the Tampa Bay Rays. They get so much more out of their players than other teams are able to.