Yankees hitters vs. Tampa Bay Rays starters

Blake Snell

Blake Snell’s performance this past season was less-superb than his rookie season in which he started 19 games, posted a 3.54 ERA and a very high K/9 of 9.91; which would rank 30^th among all MLB starters.

But last season, just about all of Snell’s stats worsened. His ERA rose above 4.00, but his pitch velocity also rose, and his pitch movements slightly differed from his rookie season.

So are these changes to blame for Snell’s lower level of performance? Or perhaps after being in the league for a season, teams have his game plan mapped out now.

Well, as it turns out, Snell did not change too much to his style of pitching. Besides the increase in speed to his pitches, and the slight discrepancies of pitch movement between the two years, Snell still pitched in similar patterns, throwing a remarkable number of changeups to right-handed batters, but almost zero changeups to left-handed batters.

His pitch patterns are a big part of why Snell struggles from time to time. All of his pitches are somewhat good individually, but because of the excess of changeups to righties, and the lack thereof to lefties.

Followed by the abundance of sliders thrown to lefties (to make up for an absence of changeups) and fewer sliders to righties than lefties, individual players and teams will “luck out” when facing Snell.

The Yankees have a handful of players who I predict will see success when facing Snell. Right-handed batters who hit well off changeups — Gary Sanchez, Aaron Judge, Ronald Torreyes — along with left-handed batters who hit well off sliders — Didi Gregorius — should all power the Bombers to wins against Snell.

The downside here for those batters who do not hit well in these circumstances. Brett Gardner, Greg Bird and Jacoby Ellsbury are all lefties who hit terribly against sliders. Paired with Giancarlo Stanton and Clint Frazier’s poor ability to hit changeups could cause the Yanks to leave a sizeable number of runners on base.

The upside of Snell, which could lead one to believe that he is ready to turn around his 2017 season, would be the drop of his WHIP from 2016 to 2017. Even though his ERA rose, he allowed fewer runners on, meaning his run damage was coming off of home runs.

This is more good news for the Yankees, who look to lead the league in home runs for the second season in a row. And what better pitcher for this to correspond to than Snell, who saw his innings between each home run allowed downgrade to under nine innings in 2017 from almost 18 the previous year.