The Dodgers are set to play for their second consecutive World Series title, and they ought to feel good about handing the ball to their Game 1 starter, Blake Snell, a certified ace on a rotation full of aces.
In three starts this postseason, Snell has a 0.86 ERA. He is authoring the sort of October brilliance that the Dodgers envisioned when the two parties reached a five-year, $182 million deal last winter. In his last start — Game 1 of the NLCS — Snell faced the minimum across eight innings, something no one had done in a playoff game since Don Larsen in 1956. He left the Brewers shaking their heads.
“I think it’s the most dominant performance against us,” Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy said. “I’ve been here 10 years.”
When Snell is at his best, this is what he does. He has thrived on the biggest stage — we all remember Game 6 of the 2020 World Series — and won two Cy Young Awards. We don’t need to write 1,000 words to tell you that Snell is one of the best pitchers of his era.
But there is one aspect of Snell’s dominant postseason that piqued our interest: his changeup.
In the postseason, Snell has generated 58 swings off his changeup. Of those 58 swings, 38 have been swing and misses — a 65.5% whiff rate. That’s good for the fifth-highest whiff rate on a single pitch type (min. 25 swings against that pitch) in a postseason in the pitch-tracking era (since 2008).
Highest whiff rate on a single pitch type in a postseason (since 2008)
In the regular season, Snell’s changeup induced a 43.5% whiff rate, its fourth straight season with a whiff rate of at least 40%. This year, 129 different pitchers threw at least 200 changeups. Only 13 generated a higher whiff rate with their changeup than Snell. That’s elite. But this is on another level.
In Game 1 of the NLCS, Snell threw 62 pitches to right-handed batters. Thirty-five of them, or 56.5%, were changeups. That’s the highest percentage of changeups that he’s ever thrown to right-handed hitters in a single game, and it’s not exactly close, as you’ll see on the chart below.
A lot of this comes from Snell reading swings and reacting accordingly, which is something he stresses. “I pitch off what they’re telling me,” Snell said after Game 1 of the NLCS. “… When I get out there, their approach will tell me what I’m going to do.”
That stands within reason. If the Blue Jays are able to lay off Snell’s changeup early on Friday night, he’ll likely alter his approach. Except here’s something else to think about: In Game 1 of the NL Wild Card Series, the Reds couldn’t hit Snell’s changeup either, so he threw 34 of them, all to righties, which was good for a 43% usage rate.
Snell has thrown his changeup at least 40% of the time to right-handed hitters in only four of his 237 career appearances. Half of those have now come in his last three starts. (If you’re wondering why we’re only talking about opposite-sided hitters, it’s because Snell has thrown only 20 left-on-left changeups in his entire career.)
“I could read swings,” the left-hander said after silencing the Reds, setting the tone for a dominant stretch of L.A. starting pitching.
That leaves us with two truths. Snell isn’t necessarily throwing so many changeups because it’s part of the game plan. Milwaukee, for example, actually had the highest BA (.261) and SLG (.427) off changeups of any team this season, with the third-lowest whiff rate (26.2%). Toronto hits changeups well, too, ranking among the best in SLG (.419) and whiff rate (25.8%). But Snell’s changeup is so good at the moment, and the opposition is telling him the same thing over and over again, with each ill-fated swing: We can’t hit this.
Which leads us to the next question: Why?
There are a number of factors at play here. Out of the hand, Snell’s changeup looks like his fastball, but the two pitches are moving differently when they arrive at the plate. Both pitches mirror spin with his curveball — they’re on a similar axis but spinning in different directions, so they’re difficult to tell apart. His location, often a subject of debate, has been pinpoint, too.
Then there’s also this, which everyone seems to be talking about:
“It was his ability to manipulate the changeup, even vary it,” Reds manager Terry Francona said after Game 1 of the Wild Card Series. “He’d throw one that was 87 and one that was 82 off the first changeup. And he threw multiple, like, two, three, four in a row at times and all different speeds. And then you throw a 97 in there, and it becomes difficult.”
Or, take this, from Freddie Freeman, who is probably thankful he doesn’t have to face Snell anymore: “Just what he can do with the changeup against right-handed hitters, I think that’s from 82 to 88 mph, he can throttle it whenever he wants. It’s not just one pitch. He’s throwing – it’s like three different pitches when you throw three different speeds for hitters.”
In the postseason, Snell has thrown changeups as slow as 79.3 mph — which he used to strike out Jackson Chourio — and as hard as 89.2 mph, which generated a swing and miss from Otto Kemp. In the graph below, you’ll see the variance in velocity among the changeups that Snell threw in his NLCS start.
“He just has the ability to manipulate the changeup within the changeup,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.
Changeups thrown at different speeds tend to have different movement profiles, too. Take the slowest changeup, the one that eluded Chourio — at 79.3 mph, it was the slowest pitch that Snell threw in Game 1 of the NLCS. Even his curveballs were faster. The pitch dropped 39 inches on its way to the plate, which we’d anticipate, because the longer a pitch takes to get to the plate, the more vulnerable it is to the effects of gravity.
Earlier in that at-bat, Snell threw Chourio an 86.8 mph changeup. It dropped just 26 inches. Chourio fouled it off. When Snell came back with the slower changeup, Chourio was out in front. It was the same pitch, except not really, because it was entirely different from the one he had just seen.
The chart below displays the movement of Snell’s pitches in Game 1 of the NLCS, via horizontal and vertical break. A small cluster would represent a relatively uniform movement profile, and vice versa. You can see the variety within the changeup (the green dots) — and, to an extent, some of his other offerings, too.
“Will Smith, the way he called the game, it was unusual the way he did it,” Murphy said. “He didn’t go back and forth, back and forth. He went changeup, changeup, changeup.”
Snell’s ability to manipulate makes that sort of sequencing possible. In an era of arsenal breadth, it’s exceedingly rare to see pitchers double, triple, or even quadruple down on a pitch type in an at-bat. Snell can do that, in part because hitters have to respect the rest of his repertoire — especially the velocity of his fastball — but also because his changeup leads multiple lives. It’s no wonder no one can hit it.
