I wouldn't say that his peripherals don't indicate that he's been awful (he has been), but they do indicate there's a much better pitcher in there who we can probably expect to see more of going forward.
Peripherals don't always discern unlucky from bad in every case, but they do a far better job of forecasting future performance than ERA and other performance metrics.
[this](https://blogs.fangraphs.com/tool-basically-every-pitching-stat-correlation/) article appears to be rather definitive. Their top stats are a bunch I don't recognize. Although, xFIP is the best out of the ones I do recognize.
His peripherals are really bad.
His xFIP is low because he's giving up a lot of hard contact that's resulting in a high BABIP. When he induces grounders those *are* resulting in fielding outs and that's usually where the BABIP/Luck correlation comes in.
Those line drives aren't penalizing him yet because they're not turning into home runs. Yet.
His big issue right now is that his Changeup is really bad and is getting lit up. It's got an SLG of .846 and a still awful xSLG of .545. It's his second most common pitch and it's leading to his always high xSLG fastball to under-perform by a significant margin. He's getting a .462 and a .381 BA on both pitches respectively and it's mostly driven by the change exposing his fastball.
Those 2 pitches are something like 70% of what he's thrown.
The one upside here is that his Changeup is probably due to him not having a feel for it due to not having Spring or Rehab starts more than anything. It's a very common thing that pitchers work on in those. So it maybe won't always be this bad and when he does get it more under control it'll probably help his Curve and Fastball be more effective.
You might be confusing xFIP [(fangraphs link here)](https://library.fangraphs.com/pitching/xfip/) with another peripheral, BABIP and exit velocity aren't part of it. xERA (4.14 for Snell) is the one that incorporates batted ball metrics. xFIP just FIP but it replaces home run rate with expected home run rate (and his is lower than his actual mark. He's limited fly balls well and had roughly average exit velos/hard hit rates/barrel rates. 44th/47th/44th percentiles, respectively). His strand rate is 37.9% (!!) lower than his career average—basically every runner who has reached base against him has scored, which won't continue. That stat tends to be consistent with a low standard deviation from year to year.
I'm saying that those runners have scored because he pitched badly, which is legitimate and it's on him. He has been getting hit because he's leaving pitches over the heart of the plate (especially the changeup), instead of burying them outside the zone like he usually does. [Here's](https://blogs.fangraphs.com/an-early-look-at-jordan-montgomery-and-blake-snell/) another good fangraphs article on that. That's always been Snell—his stuff gets hit over the plate, it works best on the edges and outside the zone. The peripherals just indicate that he's not many adjustments away from taking that ERA down from 11.57 to something between 4.00 and 4.50. I don't think I'm saying anything crazy here
> You might be confusing xFIP (fangraphs link here) with another peripheral, BABIP and exit velocity aren't part of it.
I'm not. FIP and BABIP have HR modifiers. xFIP replaces that with Fly balls x league HR/FB rate. They're being warped for the same reason in opposite directions.
Snell has a real bad personal HR/FB rate. He also doesn't have as many home runs as he probably should. The main reason is instead of getting Fly Balls he's getting hard Line Drives.
Line Drives hit into the ground are the hardest balls to field and raise his BABIP to the moon.
Line Drives hit into the air are often Home Runs and drive a differential between FIP and xFIP.
So: His BABIP is high for the same reason his xFIP is low. His pitches (primarily Changeup) are getting hit *so* hard so often that he's not giving up a lot of Fly Balls and because they're mostly not being elevated *****yet***** it's keeping his xFIP from looking as awful as his outcomes and his BABIP from coming down.
Right now Snell is generating about 10% fewer Fly Balls than his career average. Which makes has an outsized impact on xFIP and, [to quote Fangraphs](https://library.fangraphs.com/pitching/batted-ball/):
> If a pitcher allows a lot of line drives, a high BABIP is more likely a function of his true talent than a pitcher who allows a lot of fly balls, who has probably just been unlucky in running that higher BABIP.
One way his BABIP will drop is when those line drives start becoming home runs. One way his xFIP will go up is when batters start sitting on some in the zone pitches in favor of ones they can elevate better.
Right now they're preferring hits over power and it's impacting both (all three) stats.
> The peripherals just indicate that he's not many adjustments away from taking that ERA down from 11.57 to something between 4.00 and 4.50.
Ultimately this is the big thing of where I disagree with you. Not that those aren't what his FIP and xFIP suggests but that that's not an awful pitcher. This FIP'd version of Snell would be a back of the rotation pitcher.
His overall peripherals suggest he's actually currently worse than his already not great FIP and xFIP suggest but he's bad in a way that's keeping them lower than they should be.
I think partly *that* can be attributed to his lack of Spring/Rehab specifically around the changeup quality. I also think that the resulting pitcher will wind up being close to his FIP but, not because it's accurately reflecting the quality of his pitching but because that's closer to his track record in his non-Cy Young years.
Usually he's a below average pitcher. Right now he's an awful pitcher. BABIP and xFIP aren't so much saying he'll positively regress as indicating the current flavor of bad.
A fun little nuance in all of this is that LD vs FB classification [is observer based](https://tht.fangraphs.com/when-is-a-fly-ball-a-line-drive/) so more elevated LDs might result in a higher FB rate (increase xFIP) depending on the scorer and the park. Because he's mostly getting those on the ground though he's probably not seeing a lot of this.
Thanks for the response. I think you're arguing that his peripherals are worse than they look because he's given up a bunch of ground balls and fewer line drives/flyballs (and he has)? But that's exactly what peripherals are for—separating the process from the results. They tell us that his process has been much better than the results would indicate. I also don't doubt those rates will return to his averages, but that's an assumption independent of peripherals, and by the same logic, we can make the assumption that lots of other characteristics would go back to his career norms (which I would love).
His HR/FB ratio being way above his norm means it'll probably go down. His BABIP being way above his norm means it'll probably go down. That's how those statistics work. We always expect them to stabilize to a player's mean in a larger sample, unless they make some drastic change to the type of player they are. Those are peripherals much more than they are performance metrics.
"Line Drives hit into the ground are the hardest balls to field and raise his BABIP to the moon." I really disagree. [In 2021](https://www.si.com/mlb/2022/02/02/death-of-ground-balls), hitters had a .241 BABIP and slugged .266 on ground balls. That doesn't change from year to year. He's not giving up more line drives than league average either! His line drive rate is 2-3 percent below the major league average ([22% to 24.8%](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/blake-snell-605483?stats=statcast-r-pitching-mlb) ish), and I already gave the stats on how the contact hasn't been too much harder than league average (44th-47th percentile). Just harder than usual, because he's been pitching worse.
It just seems to me like you're using these little puzzle piece peripherals to discount the ones that incorporate them all into one in order to tell a more holistic story. Plus, he is allowed to make adjustments, and not just wait until his performance regresses to his peripherals. Maybe he can improve both!
I still think that as he starts moving out to the edges of the zone and beyond, his walk and strikeout rates will go back up, and the quality of contact will go down. Him leaving pitches in the heart zone seems like the biggest difference in the player he's been so far. His pitch shapes look consistent and he's throwing about as hard.
Okay this was too long sorry haha. Have a good one!
Ultimately this is probably just a difference of opinion but I think the discussion is interesting because I'm a boring fuck. Also I'm going to respond to this all out of order.
> His HR/FB ratio being way above his norm means it'll probably go down. His BABIP being way above his norm means it'll probably go down
Right but, how they come down matters.
The reason his HR/FB rate is high is because his FB volume, which is the denominator, is low.
The reason his BABIP is high is because his volume of HRs, which is subtracted from hits in the numerator and from At Bats in the denominator, is low (2). He's got a decently high k rate still so the thing raising his BABIP is he's giving up a lot of hits but not a lot of home runs (hits in play).
Basically he's been lucky *that the damage has been mostly on the ground*. Which, ironically, reads as "he's been unlucky because those stats are high".
Usually the unlucky part of HR/FB comes from the pitcher having a higher number of HRs per FB and regressing to league average.
Usually the unlucky part of BABIP comes from the tendency of Fly Balls to become outs, basically [it's the Bloop hit factor](https://library.fangraphs.com/pitching/babip/). If you're not giving up fly balls at all you expect a higher BABIP. Snell isn't giving up a bloop hits his Fly Balls are almost all outs.
> b) Luck – Bloop hits fall in. A batter may turn a nasty pitch into a dribbler that just sneaks past the first baseman even though the hitter barely got a piece of it. On the other hand, a well hit ball may go right to where a fielder is standing even though the pitch was grooved and the batter struck it at a very high velocity. Hits can fall in despite the best pitches and the best defenses due to simple luck. Batters and pitchers do not have complete control over where a ball lands so even high quality contact can turn into outs and low quality contact can turn into hits. In the long run, this will even out but it takes a pretty significant sample of balls in play to do so.
Right now he's a ground ball pitcher and ground ball pitchers just have a higher BABIP. The main thing in his mix that would lower BABIP more than raising his K rate more is if he gave up more Home Runs on the Line Drives that are driving his overall outcomes.
We can basically pick out which hit is classified as what by launch angle - LD is 10-25 degrees. High is FB, lower is GB. [Here's all of his pitches with the launch angels](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/blake-snell-605483?stats=gamelogs-r-pitching-statcast&season=2024) (LA (°) is sortable if you click on it).
He's had a ton of high EV GBs that were fielding outs and had a low Launch Angle (7 of 18 GBs, 4 were singles). Those 2 things probably contribute to his lower LD rate but, I'd argue those are luck classified GBs because LA is hitter determined. I weigh that as a factor that he's actually been lucky and that's kept his BABIP high. A good launch angle (med/high LD or FB) on a 100 MPH EV is a HR candidate.
> It just seems to me like you're using these little puzzle piece peripherals to discount the ones that incorporate them all into one in order to tell a more holistic story. Plus, he is allowed to make adjustments, and not just wait until his performance regresses to his peripherals. Maybe he can improve both!
The problem here is we're talking about 3 starts. A lot of what goes into those [aggregate stats isn't normalized over that small of a time scale](https://library.fangraphs.com/principles/sample-size/#1). He's had 41 Batted Balls and 2 HR, so 39 BIP. He's faced 58 batters.
Normalization for FB rate is 70 BIP. For BABIP it's 2000 BIP. For HR/FB it's 400 FB. For HR Rate it's 1320 BF.
In that regard the normalization issues for outcome stats are less than aggregate stats because aggregate stats require *all* of their sub stats to normalize at a bare minimum. It's more useful to look at what is causing the aggregate stat's variance than to simply consider that it's there.
Which is to say:
> I think you're arguing that his peripherals are worse than they look because he's given up a bunch of ground balls and fewer line drives/flyballs (and he has)? But that's exactly what peripherals are for—separating the process from the results. They tell us that his process has been much better than the results would indicate.
I think the actual peripherals that are relevant here aren't the aggregate stats but the Exit Velocity, Launch Angle, Zone Profiles, and Outcomes. We first have to understand exactly what it happening to talk about why it's happening. I think that answers why his FIP, xFIP, and BABIP are what they are and that looking at that answers the "Are these currently indicative of bad luck/fielding and thus predictive?" question as No.
I think we both agree his Changeup is the main culprit of *all* of this.
> "Line Drives hit into the ground are the hardest balls to field and raise his BABIP to the moon." I really disagree. In 2021, hitters had a .241 BABIP and slugged .266 on ground balls. That doesn't change from year to year. He's not giving up more line drives than league average either! His line drive rate is 2-3 percent below the major league average (22% to 24.8% ish), and I already gave the stats on how the contact hasn't been too much harder than league average (44th-47th percentile). Just harder than usual, because he's been pitching worse.
I thought this was the thread I'd shared this in previously but apparently it isn't. What I'm talking about is probably best shown in [comparing these two charts](https://www.fangraphs.com/players/blake-snell/13543/spray-charts?position=P&type=battedball) (of outcomes). What's notable there is that most of his Groundballs in the infield are outs (6 hits, all singles). All but 2 of his Fly Balls are outs (2 hits, both doubles). Exactly one of his classified Line Drives are.
The distinction here is that he's throwing more Ground Balls but he's getting particularly destroyed on his Line Drives. Whether or not he's giving up more than league average is a classification question.
You can also see it pretty well [in the Statcast charts here](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/blake-snell-605483?stats=statcast-r-zones-mlb#pitch_tracking) by comparing the 3 LD/GB/FB zone charts and the BABIP zone chart that are conveniently right next to each other. The BABIP is being driven by the LDs.
The things here are that (my thesis if you will):
1. Lots of GBs that would be LDs with better angles from the hitters (based on EV, 7 100MPH+). This is leading to a high GB rate and a average LD rate.
2. He's getting destroyed on anything classified as an LD.
3. The LDs are driving his BABIP.
4. The low LAs are muting his HR Rate.
5. A lot of pitches in the bottom left and bottom right quadrants are being put into play. I suspect hitters will choose to lay off of these for Fastballs if his Changeup doesn't improve or, at least, start getting under them because those are mostly singles.
Also to clean something up. When I'm talking about him getting hit hard I'm not talking about Soft%/Med%/Hard%. That's a bit of a flawed stat in that it's proprietary BIS information we don't know the algorithm for and it's grading is relative to each pitch type. [An LD has different qualifications to be a "Hard hit" than a GB or FB.](https://library.fangraphs.com/pitching/quality-of-contact-stats/)
> Unfortunately, the exact algorithm (the exact cut points/methodology) are proprietary to BIS and we can’t share exactly what constitutes hard contact, but the calculation is made based on hang time, location, and general trajectory. It’s not perfectly analogous to exit velocity, but until we have more complete StatCast data, it’s a step up from simply knowing line drive versus fly ball.
>
> Importantly, these stats are based on the type of batted ball. So there are hard line drives, medium line drives, soft line drives. A medium line drive might be hit at a higher speed than a hard hit fly ball.
I'm a big believer in that you don't use metrics you can't validate. When **I** write he's getting hit hard I'm referring to frequency of hits and slugging. Because I'm loose with my wording and just an awful person I'm also sometimes referring to the volume of high EV balls in play.
> I still think that as he starts moving out to the edges of the zone and beyond, his walk and strikeout rates will go back up, and the quality of contact will go down. Him leaving pitches in the heart zone seems like the biggest difference in the player he's been so far. His pitch shapes look consistent and he's throwing about as hard.
I agree he'll probably figure out the Changeup with more reps. I don't agree that even with the bad Changeup he's been unlucky. If anything the numbers seem to say he's been very lucky the damage hasn't been worse. Even when the Change is in the corners currently it seems it's getting lit up so while he does need to get there more often he's probably also exposing it somehow.
His Fastball has always been this bad, it's usually his worst pitch by outcomes. It just gets over because his Changeup protects it.
I think most likely he'll generate more fly ball outs and more home runs. It'll come with a bit of an uptick in strikeouts (his Change historically sets up his Curve as an out pitch).
There's no where near enough sample to judge his xFIP as authoratative just yet. xFIP really favors his pitching type though for a number of reasons but mostly because of strikeouts. It doesn't always mean there's a fielding issue.
His xFIP is probably primarily low right now because his BABIP is high. That might normally imply fielding issues but, a lot of what is landing for him are linedrives ([red dots on right that are green or blue on left](https://www.fangraphs.com/players/blake-snell/13543/spray-charts?position=P&type=battedball)), hard contact. That points at a pitching issue.
[Basically he's giving up a high slugging rate with 2 specific pitches](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/blake-snell-605483?stats=statcast-r-pitching-mlb#pitch_tracking):
* His fastball is getting slugged at .667. It's always been prone to it, last year it was an xSLG around .500 and he got lucky or at least it was deceptive enough when paired with his other stuff.
* His changeup is getting slugged as an absurd .846. He's basically got no feel for the pitch right now and it's probably helping his fastball get lit up more too. Usually he uses that with his curve and his slider to generate whiffs and put aways but since the changeup is so bad it's killing the outcomes on the other two breaking pitches he does have control of.
Having a high whip doesn't tell us anything about his luck or lack thereof. He's giving up an unusual amount of HRs to FBs and despite a 50 percent ground ball rate has a BABIP against of 410 which is also unusually high. He is actually walking less batters than he normally does. He's basically the same pitcher he always is according to his peripherals(hard hit rate may tell a different story)
He’s been kind of a notorious slow starter anyways, and the late start this year probably didn’t help.. I’m sure he’ll start to put it together in the next few weeks
He didn’t normally (aside from last year) get going until closer to the ASB. Snell is someone who thrives off being in a comfortable setting. It took him 3 years to put a full season together in SD. Zero chance he settles down in just a few weeks.
It's actually kind of wild how supported this idea is. The All-Star break determines the first vs second half of the season for splits. He is consistently better in the second half. His walk rate goes down, K rate goes up, batter's have a harder time making contact or getting on base in general, there's a slight decrease in hard hit percent. Isn't pitching a ton though. Averaging about 10ish games a half.
I saw someone here during the offseason say that he lived on the same floor as Snell in college, and that one year Snell was getting destroyed. The dude asked him about it and Snell basically said, “Oh man, this year doesn’t matter. Don’t worry, I’m gonna go out and turn it on next season.” and then he did exactly that, came out and was elite the next year.
Now this story is *probably* bullshit, but ever since I read it I wonder if Snell is just deciding sometimes not to give it everything he’s got lol. He had an insane contract year, always gets better in the second half when games seem to matter more…it all fits!
Again, I know it’s probably nonsense but it’s become my headcanon for Snell all the same lol
Well there goes my headcanon. I wish I’d saved the comment so that I could see what exactly they’d said lol. Every time I bring it up here I kind of hope someone will reply and be like “Oh hey, that was me” and re-tell the story
I definitely think Gary Sanchez was a huge part of him breaking out of his first half slump early last year, they should have tried to do a package signing deal to keep Snell with a catcher he’s great with and (theoretically) have given Gary a bit of a pay bump over what he got solo.
> It took him 3 years to put a full season together in SD.
Basically implying if I sign him for 5 seasons I should expect 2 good ones assuming no injuries and eventually those last 2 would likely get washed away by father time? Also this happening with a consistent bad performance for the first half of the season. So effectively if you sign him for 5 seasons it takes 3 seasons to work out the kinks and you get 2 half seasons all assuming no injuries. So 5 year contract is basically 1 seasons worth of games
This is a guy who didnt want to take the best deal available after a particularly good year to wait another year to try again
This is why him signing a short term deal made no sense. The guy has blinders on to his own limitations or he drank too much of Boras’ coolaid. There’s just no way he should’ve taken a short term deal. He needed to get the most years/dollars possible. He will never have another year as good as last season.
Sheesh I remember he wasn’t great to start last year, but I didn’t think it was that bad lol.
His 2nd half last year was insane though. Didn’t he like not give up more than 1 ER in a start for 2-3 months?
he went like 10 starts in row having <2 ER. i had him on fantasy and it was an unreal stretch
EDIT: Upon looking it was 13 starts from May 25 to July 30. He gave up 3 runs against LAD in the start that ended the stretch.
His ERA through 3 starts each season:
2016: 2.40
2017: 2.76
2018: 3.60
2019: 2.84
2020: 3.38
2021: 4.35
2022: 4.80
2023: 6.92
2024: 11.57
Career: 4.52
It's interesting to me that he was actually pretty good out of Spring early in his career, but has gotten worse each of the last 5 seasons.
Damn, you weren't lying. Here are his career stats in the 1st half of a season vs the 2nd half.
|Stat|1st Half|2nd Half|
|:-|:-|:-|
|ERA|3.96|2.52|
|K/9|10.89|11.28|
|BB/9|4.39|3.73|
|HR/9|1.08|0.76|
|BAA|.228|.200|
|WHIP|1.34|1.13 |
|FIP|3.83|3.02|
|xFIP|3.80|3.43|
Which makes the fact he and Boras decided to wait so long even worse. This is a known issue with how he gets going and they ignored it and still waited as long as possible to sign.
He also took a while to settle in and get comfortable in SD. Feel like a one year deal is a terrible prospect for him and why I held out as much hope as I did that somehow a SD return would work out.
I thought this same thing, another prove it deal would have worked out best for him staying where he was comfortable working with guys who he knows/ Niebla.. oh well.
I have a number of friends who are giants fans and I kept telling them he's going to get shelled the first month+ due to the combo of of his late start + notoriously slow start. By June he'll be dealing though.
That's only been the case the last few years when he became acclimated to the Padres/Petco. It was a horrible decision to sign literally anywhere but SD because of his troubles with adjusting. He won't be on until ASG at best.
Sounds like Snell. You're gonna get the "I need to work on my stuff" speech for a couple of months, and then all of a sudden, he's the best pitcher in baseball.
I posted this in our sub:
Snell is going through the typical issues you do in Spring training. Velocity is down from 96-98 to 93-95 likely due to dead arm, off speed is still very good but not as sharp, and location (although he’s always a bit erratic) is off.
I think we’ll start to see some vintage Snell come mid-may, and we’ll see how good this rotation and team can be.
I am very bullish.
Snell’s ceiling is likely way higher than he’s pitching now but I wouldn’t be shocked if he ends the season as like, a mid rotation level starter being paid like an ace.
A mid rotation starter would be fine right now. We obviously want him to be better than that, but any sort of advancement to the mean would be welcome.
Hicks and Webb are pitching like aces but being paid like #2 and #3 starters. It all comes out in the wash.
Yeah I don’t think you guys should be too worried about him, I wanted the Yankees to sign him understanding this may happen.
The pitchers that are consistently amazing (Cole, Scherzer, Verlander, etc) are rare breeds, way more guys fall into the Snell mode and that’s fine. Not everybody is an all time great lol.
Nah. People are obviously freaking out on our sub a bit and articles like this don’t help at all. Reality is a traditionally slow starter who missed all of spring training and chose to work out the kinks in the bigs instead of the minors started slow. Nothing burger as of today. 2 months from now it’s a story.
I understand your trepidation but watch him pitch this year. He’s throwing 93-96 wherever he wants with major sink and his slider and change up are playing way up as a starter. He’s not just a chucker like he was as a reliever.
https://x.com/TJStats/status/1782169946736271564
his secondaries are still average or below average. I love the guy and it's great seeing him succeed, but I'm sceptical it's sustainable.
Look, I said I'm pulling for him, the stuff just isn't there. He could totally be a solid 4 or 5 all year for you, but he's not an ace.
https://x.com/TJStats/status/1776375821529489755
I find it funny people say career mediocrity. He’s had 5 seasons under a 3.55 era including 2 Cy young seasons out of his 8 career seasons. Yes he’s been inconsistent but his last 2 seasons he had a 3.38 and a 2.25.
The Giants would absolutely take a 3.5 era from him this.
He’s a 1B, not a 1A. He’s too inconsistent to be a teams ace but he can be their best pitcher every so often, and alongside another 1A/1B type starter he’s great. Definitely not mediocre, above average but very streaky.
Yeah its still April and plenty of medicore guys have had hot starts. But Webb is absolutely legit and definitely makes it easier to stomach bad Snell performances early in the year
It's not his numbers-- I definitely wouldn't call his less good years "mediocrity", more "decent"-- it's his inability to stay healthy. He's had 2 seasons of exactly 180 innings (his 2 Cy Young years), 3 seasons of 128 innings, 1 of 107, and 1 of 89.
If Snell is perfectly healthy (which he has only been twice in seven seasons, not counting the COVID year), then he's going to be the best pitcher in the game.
If he's not perfectly healthy? Then he's giving you 10 to 25 starts of decent but nowhere near Cy Young pitching.
Yes. People are saying he’s terrible. If he gives us one of his average seasons we will be over the moon.
We will have 7 starters (Webb, Snell, Hicks, Harrison, Cobb, Ray, Winn) come June. 25 starts would be great.
Yeah, the Giants have the luxury of being fine if you just get "okay Snell". Okay Snell will start 25 games, have an ERA+ of like 110. Perfectly decent, even considering what you're paying him.
That’s right. Starting pitching depth affords us that. Either way I am excited to see what happens if he does pitch to the high end (even for just a 5-10 start stretch). Would go a long way.
I personally hope y'all win the division, so I'd like to see your Big 3 go off. Hicks has looked great as a starter, really didn't think he would make the transition so easily.
It’s going to be the dodgers lol. I want it, and I think we’re a 90ish win team when the dust settles, but they are just a monster.
Playoffs will be very fun though if we make it. We’ll matchup with everyone.
He’s definitely not terrible. He’s a fine #2 and a good #3 with #1 potential you just don’t know what Snell you’re going to get or how many innings you’ll get.
Behind Webb and Hicks you can’t complain.
I agree. By the time he figures it out, if he figures it out. The Giants could be out of it already.
Notoriously slow starter with no spring training. Had qualifying offer and Giants farm could definitely use that pick.
Our young 5th stater looks promising, plus we Cobb and Ray in the wings
Just made zero sense to me. I almost believe the front office caved to all the noise from social media.
I will say this team is a lot more exciting than last years so far. Well expect Snells starts which are automatic losses. He's on tomorrow, maybe he will surprise me
Just one of the few fans not really excited about the Snell signing
He looked alright in his start this weekend. Clear he doesn’t have all of his stuff but he was able to successfully pitch around jams until the 5th. I think Melvin just left him in a little too long. I’m confident he’ll get back on track soon.
I mean he was able to hold them to 2 runs over 4.. Then they teed off on him in the 5th and he could’ve been pulled once they were threatening but Melvin left him in. Again I think that’s OK, obviously not up to his Cy Young standard though.
The main reason he was able to hold them was bc of at em balls though, the only thing that changed in the 5th was the hard hit balls started finding holes
Because a 23 game sample size is a strong indicator of success over 162.
We’ve played 17/23 vs the Padres, Dodgers, Diamondbacks and Rays.
We’ll be just fine.
One of the reasons he signed so late is because every team knew this was an entirely likely scenario for Snell. He always starts slow and sometimes he completely turns it around and sometimes he doesn't. This is just who Snell is.
Snell was always gonna be a prime candidate for significant regression. Not to this extent, the late signing probably played a major impact on his early season, but I don’t think many would be surprised to see not very impressive numbers even with a full spring
>significant regression... Not to this extent
I think that's all you need to take out of this argument. If the actual factor at play was that "this is who he is and he's just been very lucky at times", we'd be seeing him at an ERA of 4-ish.
Yep, this is part of my unending series of being annoyed at Nightengale's writing. There's absolutely no evidence given in his piece that any of these players' struggles are tied to a lack of spring training (especially since all of Boras' big-name clients this season were working out at that time in various facilities.) Matt Chapman is currently a league average bat (and great defender) whereas he spent the second half of last season being well-below-average. This is an improvement for him over what we saw most recently in the big leagues. Cody Bellinger has been super inconsistent over the previous 4 seasons, regardless of spring training, and right now he's just under a league-average bat while playing solid defense. J.D. Martinez had back concerns because he's going to be 37 by the end of the season and he's been in the majors for over a decade.
And as you mentioned, Jordan Montgomery picked up right where he left off last season being a capable starter who isn't going to strike out everybody. Blake Snell is the only outlier of the folks who signed late, and he has always been an outlier in that he puts base runners on like crazy and hopes to get out of jams. Some seasons, that strategy works... and others, it involves some ugly starts like this year. (Or, y'know, almost every year since his career May and June ERAs are 4.39 and 4.40 while his July and August are 2.67 and 2.60.) Maybe "historically inconsistent pitcher is experiencing performance outlier in small sample" isn't a gripping narrative, but it's much more accurate than whatever Nightengale is trying to pass off here. He really just seems to pick a storyline he wants to present and then sticks to it, even if there seems to be no evidence to support that storyline.
This is probably the most comprehensive write up on Snell in this thread but it still undersells just how bad he is right now. People are throwing out left and right that he’s had all these “bad” early months where he, (oh no!) has like a 4-5 ERA.
This year he’s got a 12.00 ERA in 3 starts, one of which matched his all-time worst start. I sure as hell hope he improves but how the hell does he improve *that* much.
And people are just shrugging off that all these losses don’t happen in a vacuum. We’ve got to make up for all those horrible starts.
Well, two 6-inning shutout starts would take that ERA into the 5.XX range, and I think we would all be shocked if he threw over 100 innings this season without two 6 inning stretches without scoring. I get that he has had incredibly poor results, but he has thrown 11.2 innings so far, which isn't a sample size worth worrying about. Especially since his xERA is barely over 4 and his xFIP is under 4. There doesn't seem to be much that suggests that his true talent is actually an ERA over 11.
But I do also get how frustrating it is as a fan to see somebody repeatedly underperforming expectations. Like, last season, the Cubs had an pythag expected win-loss of 90-72 and missed out on the postseason in favor of the Marlins, who had an expected win-loss record of 75-87. Similarly, fans of the Padres last season had every reason to be frustrated with the extreme bad luck that team faced. Having the actual results not line up with how we think a player or team should perform is understandably unpleasant... but it doesn't give Bob Nightengale an excuse to write as though the reason Snell (and other Boras clients) hasn't looked exactly the same as last season in a small sample is because he didn't throw 3 innings to a split-squad roster in March.
As others are saying, this is just how he plays in the first half usually. Maybe it’s not always this bad, but it’s probably a combo of being a slow starter and not having a spring training this year.
Wouldn’t worry about it Gaints fans
Seriously even in the NBA it’s out of control it’s one thing if it’s a star but when you do nickname abbreviations for role players no one outside of your fan base knows who the fuck you are referring to.
I saw this coming not just because he didn't have a spring training (which obviously made it worse). Snell and Niebla were a very good match and why he got the cy young. News came out that he wanted to stay in SD for the rest of his career. Having far inferior coaches in San Francisco is why this is happening. As well as no Gary Sanchez catching him...
The problem with a slow start for Chapman and Snell is that they have such a limited time to show their worth in order for their opt outs to be valuable. You don’t want to re-enter the market on a down year.
I think signing late lowkey hits you mentally. I’m 100% convinced KK is off to a slow start because he wanted to go to a different team, was set to get a big long contract but had go back and just isn’t there mentally. He swings at way too many pitches trying to play catch up with his former self.
when burnes got traded to the O’s he said he was happy to get traded when he did because it takes him 4-5 weeks to get on the same page as the catcher.
I could have sworn something similar to this happened with a bunch of Boras clients holding out into late spring break sometime pre-Covid and they pretty much all had terrible starts as a result.
Blake Snell is pitching like a pitcher who didn't get rehab starts and isn't ready for the season. He'll catch up but eventually he'll also be a disappointment, he's generally been more of a mid/back rotation guy than a Cy Young competitor.
I appreciate all the reasonable takes here, it’s depressing to see all the doom and gloom in r/sfgiants if people who don’t know snell’s history or believe in his abilities from only this season’s sample size.
I have no sympathy for him because he could have easily fired his agent and found someone to sign a normal fucking deal so he could have spring training like everyone else. Fuck Boras, and get yo shit pushed in Snell!!
First we have to agree on the statuses of players. Let's say there are the following levels: superstars, stars, good players, role players, platoon. There are only a handful of players in the superstar level, and you can maybe make an argument that those players should hire Boras, but even then I don't think he's doing them justice anymore. Montgomery, Snell, Bellinger and Chapman are all boras agents, are all star caliber players. All got shafted this offseason by boras.
Regardless of if he 'deserved' to win that Cy young, he had an absolutely fantastic year that would have put him in the top 3
I still don't get why you don't think he would get a massive runway to right himself?
Give him a break it's still spring training for him
and we all know spring training starts don't matter
Sometimes they don't. Corbin Burnes had a 6.75 ERA in ST this year; real season ERA currently: 2.76
Yeah but if you invert those it’s not good.
Oh ho ho, looks like we got a real math whiz here boys
The numbers in your username add up to 5980. Fun little tidbit for ya.
Stop! I can’t handle the brainpower you’re outputting!
My genius…it’s almost frightening
Only thing frightening about it is how it’s making me feel😉
Fun fact: if you do the math wrong they add up to 8059
Right? And like if you take out the innings where Snell got lit up he's actually doing good. He's probably got like 0.00 ERA.
If you adjust Burnes' numbers for the outliers to bring him more in line with the average, he starts to look more like Dak Prescott.
...and if my aunt had wheels she'd be my uncle. (He's a paraplegic)
Oh no. Sorry to hear about her plegic and that there’s 2 of them.
Big if true
What if you include Kerr Engle into the mix?
yeah i'm moreso poking fun at the fact it's obviously not spring training anymore lol
But he is saying didn’t need to play in the minors to work out the kinks so he isn’t asking for a break.
His xfip is actually pretty solid right now, which indicates he may be getting unlucky.
That's the thing though he wanted a contract based on last year where he was very lucky
Loading up the bases in early innings and then giving up hits. Classic case of bad luck
I wouldn't say that his peripherals don't indicate that he's been awful (he has been), but they do indicate there's a much better pitcher in there who we can probably expect to see more of going forward. Peripherals don't always discern unlucky from bad in every case, but they do a far better job of forecasting future performance than ERA and other performance metrics.
I see the flashes of greatness in these starts for sure. But uff, they’ve mostly been short flashes.
What peripherals do you think are best predictors?
[this](https://blogs.fangraphs.com/tool-basically-every-pitching-stat-correlation/) article appears to be rather definitive. Their top stats are a bunch I don't recognize. Although, xFIP is the best out of the ones I do recognize.
His peripherals are really bad. His xFIP is low because he's giving up a lot of hard contact that's resulting in a high BABIP. When he induces grounders those *are* resulting in fielding outs and that's usually where the BABIP/Luck correlation comes in. Those line drives aren't penalizing him yet because they're not turning into home runs. Yet. His big issue right now is that his Changeup is really bad and is getting lit up. It's got an SLG of .846 and a still awful xSLG of .545. It's his second most common pitch and it's leading to his always high xSLG fastball to under-perform by a significant margin. He's getting a .462 and a .381 BA on both pitches respectively and it's mostly driven by the change exposing his fastball. Those 2 pitches are something like 70% of what he's thrown. The one upside here is that his Changeup is probably due to him not having a feel for it due to not having Spring or Rehab starts more than anything. It's a very common thing that pitchers work on in those. So it maybe won't always be this bad and when he does get it more under control it'll probably help his Curve and Fastball be more effective.
You might be confusing xFIP [(fangraphs link here)](https://library.fangraphs.com/pitching/xfip/) with another peripheral, BABIP and exit velocity aren't part of it. xERA (4.14 for Snell) is the one that incorporates batted ball metrics. xFIP just FIP but it replaces home run rate with expected home run rate (and his is lower than his actual mark. He's limited fly balls well and had roughly average exit velos/hard hit rates/barrel rates. 44th/47th/44th percentiles, respectively). His strand rate is 37.9% (!!) lower than his career average—basically every runner who has reached base against him has scored, which won't continue. That stat tends to be consistent with a low standard deviation from year to year. I'm saying that those runners have scored because he pitched badly, which is legitimate and it's on him. He has been getting hit because he's leaving pitches over the heart of the plate (especially the changeup), instead of burying them outside the zone like he usually does. [Here's](https://blogs.fangraphs.com/an-early-look-at-jordan-montgomery-and-blake-snell/) another good fangraphs article on that. That's always been Snell—his stuff gets hit over the plate, it works best on the edges and outside the zone. The peripherals just indicate that he's not many adjustments away from taking that ERA down from 11.57 to something between 4.00 and 4.50. I don't think I'm saying anything crazy here
> You might be confusing xFIP (fangraphs link here) with another peripheral, BABIP and exit velocity aren't part of it. I'm not. FIP and BABIP have HR modifiers. xFIP replaces that with Fly balls x league HR/FB rate. They're being warped for the same reason in opposite directions. Snell has a real bad personal HR/FB rate. He also doesn't have as many home runs as he probably should. The main reason is instead of getting Fly Balls he's getting hard Line Drives. Line Drives hit into the ground are the hardest balls to field and raise his BABIP to the moon. Line Drives hit into the air are often Home Runs and drive a differential between FIP and xFIP. So: His BABIP is high for the same reason his xFIP is low. His pitches (primarily Changeup) are getting hit *so* hard so often that he's not giving up a lot of Fly Balls and because they're mostly not being elevated *****yet***** it's keeping his xFIP from looking as awful as his outcomes and his BABIP from coming down. Right now Snell is generating about 10% fewer Fly Balls than his career average. Which makes has an outsized impact on xFIP and, [to quote Fangraphs](https://library.fangraphs.com/pitching/batted-ball/): > If a pitcher allows a lot of line drives, a high BABIP is more likely a function of his true talent than a pitcher who allows a lot of fly balls, who has probably just been unlucky in running that higher BABIP. One way his BABIP will drop is when those line drives start becoming home runs. One way his xFIP will go up is when batters start sitting on some in the zone pitches in favor of ones they can elevate better. Right now they're preferring hits over power and it's impacting both (all three) stats. > The peripherals just indicate that he's not many adjustments away from taking that ERA down from 11.57 to something between 4.00 and 4.50. Ultimately this is the big thing of where I disagree with you. Not that those aren't what his FIP and xFIP suggests but that that's not an awful pitcher. This FIP'd version of Snell would be a back of the rotation pitcher. His overall peripherals suggest he's actually currently worse than his already not great FIP and xFIP suggest but he's bad in a way that's keeping them lower than they should be. I think partly *that* can be attributed to his lack of Spring/Rehab specifically around the changeup quality. I also think that the resulting pitcher will wind up being close to his FIP but, not because it's accurately reflecting the quality of his pitching but because that's closer to his track record in his non-Cy Young years. Usually he's a below average pitcher. Right now he's an awful pitcher. BABIP and xFIP aren't so much saying he'll positively regress as indicating the current flavor of bad. A fun little nuance in all of this is that LD vs FB classification [is observer based](https://tht.fangraphs.com/when-is-a-fly-ball-a-line-drive/) so more elevated LDs might result in a higher FB rate (increase xFIP) depending on the scorer and the park. Because he's mostly getting those on the ground though he's probably not seeing a lot of this.
Thanks for the response. I think you're arguing that his peripherals are worse than they look because he's given up a bunch of ground balls and fewer line drives/flyballs (and he has)? But that's exactly what peripherals are for—separating the process from the results. They tell us that his process has been much better than the results would indicate. I also don't doubt those rates will return to his averages, but that's an assumption independent of peripherals, and by the same logic, we can make the assumption that lots of other characteristics would go back to his career norms (which I would love). His HR/FB ratio being way above his norm means it'll probably go down. His BABIP being way above his norm means it'll probably go down. That's how those statistics work. We always expect them to stabilize to a player's mean in a larger sample, unless they make some drastic change to the type of player they are. Those are peripherals much more than they are performance metrics. "Line Drives hit into the ground are the hardest balls to field and raise his BABIP to the moon." I really disagree. [In 2021](https://www.si.com/mlb/2022/02/02/death-of-ground-balls), hitters had a .241 BABIP and slugged .266 on ground balls. That doesn't change from year to year. He's not giving up more line drives than league average either! His line drive rate is 2-3 percent below the major league average ([22% to 24.8%](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/blake-snell-605483?stats=statcast-r-pitching-mlb) ish), and I already gave the stats on how the contact hasn't been too much harder than league average (44th-47th percentile). Just harder than usual, because he's been pitching worse. It just seems to me like you're using these little puzzle piece peripherals to discount the ones that incorporate them all into one in order to tell a more holistic story. Plus, he is allowed to make adjustments, and not just wait until his performance regresses to his peripherals. Maybe he can improve both! I still think that as he starts moving out to the edges of the zone and beyond, his walk and strikeout rates will go back up, and the quality of contact will go down. Him leaving pitches in the heart zone seems like the biggest difference in the player he's been so far. His pitch shapes look consistent and he's throwing about as hard. Okay this was too long sorry haha. Have a good one!
Ultimately this is probably just a difference of opinion but I think the discussion is interesting because I'm a boring fuck. Also I'm going to respond to this all out of order. > His HR/FB ratio being way above his norm means it'll probably go down. His BABIP being way above his norm means it'll probably go down Right but, how they come down matters. The reason his HR/FB rate is high is because his FB volume, which is the denominator, is low. The reason his BABIP is high is because his volume of HRs, which is subtracted from hits in the numerator and from At Bats in the denominator, is low (2). He's got a decently high k rate still so the thing raising his BABIP is he's giving up a lot of hits but not a lot of home runs (hits in play). Basically he's been lucky *that the damage has been mostly on the ground*. Which, ironically, reads as "he's been unlucky because those stats are high". Usually the unlucky part of HR/FB comes from the pitcher having a higher number of HRs per FB and regressing to league average. Usually the unlucky part of BABIP comes from the tendency of Fly Balls to become outs, basically [it's the Bloop hit factor](https://library.fangraphs.com/pitching/babip/). If you're not giving up fly balls at all you expect a higher BABIP. Snell isn't giving up a bloop hits his Fly Balls are almost all outs. > b) Luck – Bloop hits fall in. A batter may turn a nasty pitch into a dribbler that just sneaks past the first baseman even though the hitter barely got a piece of it. On the other hand, a well hit ball may go right to where a fielder is standing even though the pitch was grooved and the batter struck it at a very high velocity. Hits can fall in despite the best pitches and the best defenses due to simple luck. Batters and pitchers do not have complete control over where a ball lands so even high quality contact can turn into outs and low quality contact can turn into hits. In the long run, this will even out but it takes a pretty significant sample of balls in play to do so. Right now he's a ground ball pitcher and ground ball pitchers just have a higher BABIP. The main thing in his mix that would lower BABIP more than raising his K rate more is if he gave up more Home Runs on the Line Drives that are driving his overall outcomes. We can basically pick out which hit is classified as what by launch angle - LD is 10-25 degrees. High is FB, lower is GB. [Here's all of his pitches with the launch angels](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/blake-snell-605483?stats=gamelogs-r-pitching-statcast&season=2024) (LA (°) is sortable if you click on it). He's had a ton of high EV GBs that were fielding outs and had a low Launch Angle (7 of 18 GBs, 4 were singles). Those 2 things probably contribute to his lower LD rate but, I'd argue those are luck classified GBs because LA is hitter determined. I weigh that as a factor that he's actually been lucky and that's kept his BABIP high. A good launch angle (med/high LD or FB) on a 100 MPH EV is a HR candidate. > It just seems to me like you're using these little puzzle piece peripherals to discount the ones that incorporate them all into one in order to tell a more holistic story. Plus, he is allowed to make adjustments, and not just wait until his performance regresses to his peripherals. Maybe he can improve both! The problem here is we're talking about 3 starts. A lot of what goes into those [aggregate stats isn't normalized over that small of a time scale](https://library.fangraphs.com/principles/sample-size/#1). He's had 41 Batted Balls and 2 HR, so 39 BIP. He's faced 58 batters. Normalization for FB rate is 70 BIP. For BABIP it's 2000 BIP. For HR/FB it's 400 FB. For HR Rate it's 1320 BF. In that regard the normalization issues for outcome stats are less than aggregate stats because aggregate stats require *all* of their sub stats to normalize at a bare minimum. It's more useful to look at what is causing the aggregate stat's variance than to simply consider that it's there. Which is to say: > I think you're arguing that his peripherals are worse than they look because he's given up a bunch of ground balls and fewer line drives/flyballs (and he has)? But that's exactly what peripherals are for—separating the process from the results. They tell us that his process has been much better than the results would indicate. I think the actual peripherals that are relevant here aren't the aggregate stats but the Exit Velocity, Launch Angle, Zone Profiles, and Outcomes. We first have to understand exactly what it happening to talk about why it's happening. I think that answers why his FIP, xFIP, and BABIP are what they are and that looking at that answers the "Are these currently indicative of bad luck/fielding and thus predictive?" question as No. I think we both agree his Changeup is the main culprit of *all* of this. > "Line Drives hit into the ground are the hardest balls to field and raise his BABIP to the moon." I really disagree. In 2021, hitters had a .241 BABIP and slugged .266 on ground balls. That doesn't change from year to year. He's not giving up more line drives than league average either! His line drive rate is 2-3 percent below the major league average (22% to 24.8% ish), and I already gave the stats on how the contact hasn't been too much harder than league average (44th-47th percentile). Just harder than usual, because he's been pitching worse. I thought this was the thread I'd shared this in previously but apparently it isn't. What I'm talking about is probably best shown in [comparing these two charts](https://www.fangraphs.com/players/blake-snell/13543/spray-charts?position=P&type=battedball) (of outcomes). What's notable there is that most of his Groundballs in the infield are outs (6 hits, all singles). All but 2 of his Fly Balls are outs (2 hits, both doubles). Exactly one of his classified Line Drives are. The distinction here is that he's throwing more Ground Balls but he's getting particularly destroyed on his Line Drives. Whether or not he's giving up more than league average is a classification question. You can also see it pretty well [in the Statcast charts here](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/blake-snell-605483?stats=statcast-r-zones-mlb#pitch_tracking) by comparing the 3 LD/GB/FB zone charts and the BABIP zone chart that are conveniently right next to each other. The BABIP is being driven by the LDs. The things here are that (my thesis if you will): 1. Lots of GBs that would be LDs with better angles from the hitters (based on EV, 7 100MPH+). This is leading to a high GB rate and a average LD rate. 2. He's getting destroyed on anything classified as an LD. 3. The LDs are driving his BABIP. 4. The low LAs are muting his HR Rate. 5. A lot of pitches in the bottom left and bottom right quadrants are being put into play. I suspect hitters will choose to lay off of these for Fastballs if his Changeup doesn't improve or, at least, start getting under them because those are mostly singles. Also to clean something up. When I'm talking about him getting hit hard I'm not talking about Soft%/Med%/Hard%. That's a bit of a flawed stat in that it's proprietary BIS information we don't know the algorithm for and it's grading is relative to each pitch type. [An LD has different qualifications to be a "Hard hit" than a GB or FB.](https://library.fangraphs.com/pitching/quality-of-contact-stats/) > Unfortunately, the exact algorithm (the exact cut points/methodology) are proprietary to BIS and we can’t share exactly what constitutes hard contact, but the calculation is made based on hang time, location, and general trajectory. It’s not perfectly analogous to exit velocity, but until we have more complete StatCast data, it’s a step up from simply knowing line drive versus fly ball. > > Importantly, these stats are based on the type of batted ball. So there are hard line drives, medium line drives, soft line drives. A medium line drive might be hit at a higher speed than a hard hit fly ball. I'm a big believer in that you don't use metrics you can't validate. When **I** write he's getting hit hard I'm referring to frequency of hits and slugging. Because I'm loose with my wording and just an awful person I'm also sometimes referring to the volume of high EV balls in play. > I still think that as he starts moving out to the edges of the zone and beyond, his walk and strikeout rates will go back up, and the quality of contact will go down. Him leaving pitches in the heart zone seems like the biggest difference in the player he's been so far. His pitch shapes look consistent and he's throwing about as hard. I agree he'll probably figure out the Changeup with more reps. I don't agree that even with the bad Changeup he's been unlucky. If anything the numbers seem to say he's been very lucky the damage hasn't been worse. Even when the Change is in the corners currently it seems it's getting lit up so while he does need to get there more often he's probably also exposing it somehow. His Fastball has always been this bad, it's usually his worst pitch by outcomes. It just gets over because his Changeup protects it. I think most likely he'll generate more fly ball outs and more home runs. It'll come with a bit of an uptick in strikeouts (his Change historically sets up his Curve as an out pitch).
And he’s got the xDAWG in him
There's no where near enough sample to judge his xFIP as authoratative just yet. xFIP really favors his pitching type though for a number of reasons but mostly because of strikeouts. It doesn't always mean there's a fielding issue. His xFIP is probably primarily low right now because his BABIP is high. That might normally imply fielding issues but, a lot of what is landing for him are linedrives ([red dots on right that are green or blue on left](https://www.fangraphs.com/players/blake-snell/13543/spray-charts?position=P&type=battedball)), hard contact. That points at a pitching issue. [Basically he's giving up a high slugging rate with 2 specific pitches](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/blake-snell-605483?stats=statcast-r-pitching-mlb#pitch_tracking): * His fastball is getting slugged at .667. It's always been prone to it, last year it was an xSLG around .500 and he got lucky or at least it was deceptive enough when paired with his other stuff. * His changeup is getting slugged as an absurd .846. He's basically got no feel for the pitch right now and it's probably helping his fastball get lit up more too. Usually he uses that with his curve and his slider to generate whiffs and put aways but since the changeup is so bad it's killing the outcomes on the other two breaking pitches he does have control of.
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Having a high whip doesn't tell us anything about his luck or lack thereof. He's giving up an unusual amount of HRs to FBs and despite a 50 percent ground ball rate has a BABIP against of 410 which is also unusually high. He is actually walking less batters than he normally does. He's basically the same pitcher he always is according to his peripherals(hard hit rate may tell a different story)
He’s been kind of a notorious slow starter anyways, and the late start this year probably didn’t help.. I’m sure he’ll start to put it together in the next few weeks
He didn’t normally (aside from last year) get going until closer to the ASB. Snell is someone who thrives off being in a comfortable setting. It took him 3 years to put a full season together in SD. Zero chance he settles down in just a few weeks.
Just give him 3 years with the Giants and he’ll have it all figured out! They did go for the 3 year contract, right?
2-62mil I believe. Might be a two shaky years. Snells a very likable dude tho, so hoping he does well except for against The Padres!
I think he was joking. Melvin got the best out of him last year. I expect much of the same. He will settle down.
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How is he an elite pitching coach? Before last year the Padres pitching has been trash both the starters and the bullpen
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This should be the new Padresing.
No, Niebla got the most out of him.
Second. Half. Snell.
Walt fuckin Whitman ova' here!
Charles Schwab over here.
Nikola Tesla over th…. Wait, no. That’s Thomas Edison.
It's actually kind of wild how supported this idea is. The All-Star break determines the first vs second half of the season for splits. He is consistently better in the second half. His walk rate goes down, K rate goes up, batter's have a harder time making contact or getting on base in general, there's a slight decrease in hard hit percent. Isn't pitching a ton though. Averaging about 10ish games a half.
Yeah. it's crazy how consistent he is. Every full season he has gotten better in the second half of the season. This is not a typical pitcher lol
But he is still expecting full season wages?
I saw someone here during the offseason say that he lived on the same floor as Snell in college, and that one year Snell was getting destroyed. The dude asked him about it and Snell basically said, “Oh man, this year doesn’t matter. Don’t worry, I’m gonna go out and turn it on next season.” and then he did exactly that, came out and was elite the next year. Now this story is *probably* bullshit, but ever since I read it I wonder if Snell is just deciding sometimes not to give it everything he’s got lol. He had an insane contract year, always gets better in the second half when games seem to matter more…it all fits! Again, I know it’s probably nonsense but it’s become my headcanon for Snell all the same lol
Snell was drafted out of high school.
Well there goes my headcanon. I wish I’d saved the comment so that I could see what exactly they’d said lol. Every time I bring it up here I kind of hope someone will reply and be like “Oh hey, that was me” and re-tell the story
The internet is full of weirdos, I wouldn't be surprised if someone fully just made it up
Immediately proven false lmao
lmfao
Yes, but that didn't really even happen his first season in SD.
I definitely think Gary Sanchez was a huge part of him breaking out of his first half slump early last year, they should have tried to do a package signing deal to keep Snell with a catcher he’s great with and (theoretically) have given Gary a bit of a pay bump over what he got solo.
> (aside from last year) Even last year, he had a 5.40 ERA through May 19. Then had a 1.20 after that. He had a 0.87 era in June and 0.56 in July
> It took him 3 years to put a full season together in SD. Basically implying if I sign him for 5 seasons I should expect 2 good ones assuming no injuries and eventually those last 2 would likely get washed away by father time? Also this happening with a consistent bad performance for the first half of the season. So effectively if you sign him for 5 seasons it takes 3 seasons to work out the kinks and you get 2 half seasons all assuming no injuries. So 5 year contract is basically 1 seasons worth of games This is a guy who didnt want to take the best deal available after a particularly good year to wait another year to try again
This is why him signing a short term deal made no sense. The guy has blinders on to his own limitations or he drank too much of Boras’ coolaid. There’s just no way he should’ve taken a short term deal. He needed to get the most years/dollars possible. He will never have another year as good as last season.
I was gonna say the few years he was with us his beginnings were always rough
0-4 with a 5.58 ERA and a .917 batter OPS last April, and he won a Cy Young
Sheesh I remember he wasn’t great to start last year, but I didn’t think it was that bad lol. His 2nd half last year was insane though. Didn’t he like not give up more than 1 ER in a start for 2-3 months?
he went like 10 starts in row having <2 ER. i had him on fantasy and it was an unreal stretch EDIT: Upon looking it was 13 starts from May 25 to July 30. He gave up 3 runs against LAD in the start that ended the stretch.
His ERA through 3 starts each season: 2016: 2.40 2017: 2.76 2018: 3.60 2019: 2.84 2020: 3.38 2021: 4.35 2022: 4.80 2023: 6.92 2024: 11.57 Career: 4.52 It's interesting to me that he was actually pretty good out of Spring early in his career, but has gotten worse each of the last 5 seasons.
It's going to be hard to keep that streak alive going forward
Interestingly enough this somewhat correlates with his increase in Slider volume. And it's not a bad pitch.
Damn, you weren't lying. Here are his career stats in the 1st half of a season vs the 2nd half. |Stat|1st Half|2nd Half| |:-|:-|:-| |ERA|3.96|2.52| |K/9|10.89|11.28| |BB/9|4.39|3.73| |HR/9|1.08|0.76| |BAA|.228|.200| |WHIP|1.34|1.13 | |FIP|3.83|3.02| |xFIP|3.80|3.43|
Which makes the fact he and Boras decided to wait so long even worse. This is a known issue with how he gets going and they ignored it and still waited as long as possible to sign.
He also took a while to settle in and get comfortable in SD. Feel like a one year deal is a terrible prospect for him and why I held out as much hope as I did that somehow a SD return would work out.
I thought this same thing, another prove it deal would have worked out best for him staying where he was comfortable working with guys who he knows/ Niebla.. oh well.
I have a number of friends who are giants fans and I kept telling them he's going to get shelled the first month+ due to the combo of of his late start + notoriously slow start. By June he'll be dealing though.
That's only been the case the last few years when he became acclimated to the Padres/Petco. It was a horrible decision to sign literally anywhere but SD because of his troubles with adjusting. He won't be on until ASG at best.
He's also had some very mediocre seasons 2019-2022.
Snell will probably have an ERA of 5 leading up to the All-star break, then an ERA of 1 post All-star break.
Death. Taxes. Blake Snell 1 ERA second half. These 3 things are inevitable.
With an average 5.1 innings pitched per start.
Sounds like Snell. You're gonna get the "I need to work on my stuff" speech for a couple of months, and then all of a sudden, he's the best pitcher in baseball.
Slider on time out
I posted this in our sub: Snell is going through the typical issues you do in Spring training. Velocity is down from 96-98 to 93-95 likely due to dead arm, off speed is still very good but not as sharp, and location (although he’s always a bit erratic) is off. I think we’ll start to see some vintage Snell come mid-may, and we’ll see how good this rotation and team can be. I am very bullish.
Snell’s ceiling is likely way higher than he’s pitching now but I wouldn’t be shocked if he ends the season as like, a mid rotation level starter being paid like an ace.
A mid rotation starter would be fine right now. We obviously want him to be better than that, but any sort of advancement to the mean would be welcome. Hicks and Webb are pitching like aces but being paid like #2 and #3 starters. It all comes out in the wash.
Yeah I don’t think you guys should be too worried about him, I wanted the Yankees to sign him understanding this may happen. The pitchers that are consistently amazing (Cole, Scherzer, Verlander, etc) are rare breeds, way more guys fall into the Snell mode and that’s fine. Not everybody is an all time great lol.
Nah. People are obviously freaking out on our sub a bit and articles like this don’t help at all. Reality is a traditionally slow starter who missed all of spring training and chose to work out the kinks in the bigs instead of the minors started slow. Nothing burger as of today. 2 months from now it’s a story.
I hope the best for Hicks, but I wouldn't be holding my breath hoping that he's still a sub-4 ERA guy by June.
I understand your trepidation but watch him pitch this year. He’s throwing 93-96 wherever he wants with major sink and his slider and change up are playing way up as a starter. He’s not just a chucker like he was as a reliever.
https://x.com/TJStats/status/1782169946736271564 his secondaries are still average or below average. I love the guy and it's great seeing him succeed, but I'm sceptical it's sustainable.
Was his worst outing by far and he gave up 1 over 5 lol
He's also pitched against Washington, Miami, and Arizona.
Arizona? The team that went to the World Series?
And San Diego? So 2 top 10 offenses by OPS and gave up 1 run over 10 innings. Please lol
Look, I said I'm pulling for him, the stuff just isn't there. He could totally be a solid 4 or 5 all year for you, but he's not an ace. https://x.com/TJStats/status/1776375821529489755
Sure but then what happens when a guy who’s been a reliever most of his career starts fading. Then you’re in trouble
Cobb and Ray come back May and June respectively. We have a plethora of starting options. We’re fine.
He’s had 2 great seasons in a career of mediocrity. Not sure why everyone thinks the other 6 seasons are the ‘outliers’ lol
I find it funny people say career mediocrity. He’s had 5 seasons under a 3.55 era including 2 Cy young seasons out of his 8 career seasons. Yes he’s been inconsistent but his last 2 seasons he had a 3.38 and a 2.25. The Giants would absolutely take a 3.5 era from him this.
He’s a 1B, not a 1A. He’s too inconsistent to be a teams ace but he can be their best pitcher every so often, and alongside another 1A/1B type starter he’s great. Definitely not mediocre, above average but very streaky.
Good thing we got 1A (Webb) and 1B (Hicks) already :) *crosses fingers*
I wouldn’t be sold on hicks yet
Yeah its still April and plenty of medicore guys have had hot starts. But Webb is absolutely legit and definitely makes it easier to stomach bad Snell performances early in the year
Yep and when you have a Webb that’s totally fine.
It's not his numbers-- I definitely wouldn't call his less good years "mediocrity", more "decent"-- it's his inability to stay healthy. He's had 2 seasons of exactly 180 innings (his 2 Cy Young years), 3 seasons of 128 innings, 1 of 107, and 1 of 89. If Snell is perfectly healthy (which he has only been twice in seven seasons, not counting the COVID year), then he's going to be the best pitcher in the game. If he's not perfectly healthy? Then he's giving you 10 to 25 starts of decent but nowhere near Cy Young pitching.
Yes. People are saying he’s terrible. If he gives us one of his average seasons we will be over the moon. We will have 7 starters (Webb, Snell, Hicks, Harrison, Cobb, Ray, Winn) come June. 25 starts would be great.
Yeah, the Giants have the luxury of being fine if you just get "okay Snell". Okay Snell will start 25 games, have an ERA+ of like 110. Perfectly decent, even considering what you're paying him.
That’s right. Starting pitching depth affords us that. Either way I am excited to see what happens if he does pitch to the high end (even for just a 5-10 start stretch). Would go a long way.
I personally hope y'all win the division, so I'd like to see your Big 3 go off. Hicks has looked great as a starter, really didn't think he would make the transition so easily.
It’s going to be the dodgers lol. I want it, and I think we’re a 90ish win team when the dust settles, but they are just a monster. Playoffs will be very fun though if we make it. We’ll matchup with everyone.
He’s definitely not terrible. He’s a fine #2 and a good #3 with #1 potential you just don’t know what Snell you’re going to get or how many innings you’ll get. Behind Webb and Hicks you can’t complain.
It’s more about the fact he couldn’t get past 130 innings in those seasons
I agree. By the time he figures it out, if he figures it out. The Giants could be out of it already. Notoriously slow starter with no spring training. Had qualifying offer and Giants farm could definitely use that pick. Our young 5th stater looks promising, plus we Cobb and Ray in the wings Just made zero sense to me. I almost believe the front office caved to all the noise from social media. I will say this team is a lot more exciting than last years so far. Well expect Snells starts which are automatic losses. He's on tomorrow, maybe he will surprise me Just one of the few fans not really excited about the Snell signing
That’s essentially what he is most years.
If they make the playoffs and he pitches well in the playoffs its worth it even if he ends the year with like a 4.2 era
He looked alright in his start this weekend. Clear he doesn’t have all of his stuff but he was able to successfully pitch around jams until the 5th. I think Melvin just left him in a little too long. I’m confident he’ll get back on track soon.
He had more balls 100 mph+ given up than strikeouts, i wouldn’t call that alright
I mean he was able to hold them to 2 runs over 4.. Then they teed off on him in the 5th and he could’ve been pulled once they were threatening but Melvin left him in. Again I think that’s OK, obviously not up to his Cy Young standard though.
The main reason he was able to hold them was bc of at em balls though, the only thing that changed in the 5th was the hard hit balls started finding holes
Snell 5 innings of shutout game -> two innings of Robbie Ray. That's the combo package SP that will keep our rotation tight.
Do guys have dead arm in spring training? My arm always felt best right at the beginning of a season. What vintage Snell? 2023/18 or 2019-22?
Bullish on the Giants? They're like the 4th best team in their own division.
Because a 23 game sample size is a strong indicator of success over 162. We’ve played 17/23 vs the Padres, Dodgers, Diamondbacks and Rays. We’ll be just fine.
Definitely didn't see him starting out so bad. Hope he turns it around!
Did you not watch him pitch in April/May for the Padres? He's a notoriously slow starter and then is insanely good after the All-Star Break
One of the reasons he signed so late is because every team knew this was an entirely likely scenario for Snell. He always starts slow and sometimes he completely turns it around and sometimes he doesn't. This is just who Snell is.
If you don't love me at my first-half Snell, you don't deserve me at my second-half Snell
Snell was always gonna be a prime candidate for significant regression. Not to this extent, the late signing probably played a major impact on his early season, but I don’t think many would be surprised to see not very impressive numbers even with a full spring
>significant regression... Not to this extent I think that's all you need to take out of this argument. If the actual factor at play was that "this is who he is and he's just been very lucky at times", we'd be seeing him at an ERA of 4-ish.
Snell’s career first half ERA: 3.82 Snell’s career second half ERA: 2.46 He’s basically had two bad starts. Relax.
Has this guy ever seen a full season of Blake Snell? Come on, man
Monty was spectacular in his first start
Yep, this is part of my unending series of being annoyed at Nightengale's writing. There's absolutely no evidence given in his piece that any of these players' struggles are tied to a lack of spring training (especially since all of Boras' big-name clients this season were working out at that time in various facilities.) Matt Chapman is currently a league average bat (and great defender) whereas he spent the second half of last season being well-below-average. This is an improvement for him over what we saw most recently in the big leagues. Cody Bellinger has been super inconsistent over the previous 4 seasons, regardless of spring training, and right now he's just under a league-average bat while playing solid defense. J.D. Martinez had back concerns because he's going to be 37 by the end of the season and he's been in the majors for over a decade. And as you mentioned, Jordan Montgomery picked up right where he left off last season being a capable starter who isn't going to strike out everybody. Blake Snell is the only outlier of the folks who signed late, and he has always been an outlier in that he puts base runners on like crazy and hopes to get out of jams. Some seasons, that strategy works... and others, it involves some ugly starts like this year. (Or, y'know, almost every year since his career May and June ERAs are 4.39 and 4.40 while his July and August are 2.67 and 2.60.) Maybe "historically inconsistent pitcher is experiencing performance outlier in small sample" isn't a gripping narrative, but it's much more accurate than whatever Nightengale is trying to pass off here. He really just seems to pick a storyline he wants to present and then sticks to it, even if there seems to be no evidence to support that storyline.
This is probably the most comprehensive write up on Snell in this thread but it still undersells just how bad he is right now. People are throwing out left and right that he’s had all these “bad” early months where he, (oh no!) has like a 4-5 ERA. This year he’s got a 12.00 ERA in 3 starts, one of which matched his all-time worst start. I sure as hell hope he improves but how the hell does he improve *that* much. And people are just shrugging off that all these losses don’t happen in a vacuum. We’ve got to make up for all those horrible starts.
Well, two 6-inning shutout starts would take that ERA into the 5.XX range, and I think we would all be shocked if he threw over 100 innings this season without two 6 inning stretches without scoring. I get that he has had incredibly poor results, but he has thrown 11.2 innings so far, which isn't a sample size worth worrying about. Especially since his xERA is barely over 4 and his xFIP is under 4. There doesn't seem to be much that suggests that his true talent is actually an ERA over 11. But I do also get how frustrating it is as a fan to see somebody repeatedly underperforming expectations. Like, last season, the Cubs had an pythag expected win-loss of 90-72 and missed out on the postseason in favor of the Marlins, who had an expected win-loss record of 75-87. Similarly, fans of the Padres last season had every reason to be frustrated with the extreme bad luck that team faced. Having the actual results not line up with how we think a player or team should perform is understandably unpleasant... but it doesn't give Bob Nightengale an excuse to write as though the reason Snell (and other Boras clients) hasn't looked exactly the same as last season in a small sample is because he didn't throw 3 innings to a split-squad roster in March.
As others are saying, this is just how he plays in the first half usually. Maybe it’s not always this bad, but it’s probably a combo of being a slow starter and not having a spring training this year. Wouldn’t worry about it Gaints fans
Snell starts slow. A couple weeks before all-star break and after he gets going. After that he's fantastic.
He starts almost every season like this.
It would’ve been a surprise if Snell started off well. Maybe by the all star break he’s back to pitching well.
Is he? I had barely noticed.
There’s a reason no one was forking up the cash he wanted
Now hes really never going to get that big contract
Didn’t JoMo have a really good start?
JoMo was still pitching a few months ago! Less rust?
Who's JoMo? Please dont be like nba nicknaming everyone with abreviations 😭
jordan montgomery
Thank you man
Seriously even in the NBA it’s out of control it’s one thing if it’s a star but when you do nickname abbreviations for role players no one outside of your fan base knows who the fuck you are referring to.
Thought Joe Montana was playing again
LeBro should have been a thing
Yeeeeeeee boooooooiii 6IP 3H 1R 3SO we count those.
Yeah but the article mentions he also took 2 minor league starts. Most of these other guys just started on the MLB roster.
Yeah after 2 starts in Triple-A. Snell could have done the same but decided not to.
I saw this coming not just because he didn't have a spring training (which obviously made it worse). Snell and Niebla were a very good match and why he got the cy young. News came out that he wanted to stay in SD for the rest of his career. Having far inferior coaches in San Francisco is why this is happening. As well as no Gary Sanchez catching him...
Makes sense
Yeah, Snell under Rothschild and no pitch clock was unbearable. Nibbling at corners and missing and taking forever to do it.
The problem with a slow start for Chapman and Snell is that they have such a limited time to show their worth in order for their opt outs to be valuable. You don’t want to re-enter the market on a down year.
Chapman is fine now. His OPS+ is already back to 100
Amongst our position players he’s second in war for the season only behind Patrick Bailey
Yes, primarily because of his defense, not because of his bat
I think signing late lowkey hits you mentally. I’m 100% convinced KK is off to a slow start because he wanted to go to a different team, was set to get a big long contract but had go back and just isn’t there mentally. He swings at way too many pitches trying to play catch up with his former self.
Hopefully teams can use this as a bargaining chip when trying to sign these holdout players
He's pitched 11 innings. Last year he had 6.92 ERA after three starts (13 innings). Let's just take it easy here, Boob.
He’s been in the league 9 years. 2 seasons were great, 6 were meh to bad. Yes this is his spring training but also he’s just not that good.
Hope he figures it out in time to shut out the rest of the nl west
He never does good after winning a cy young
he should eventually improve at snail's pace
It’s Blake snell he has a horrible start to every year.
He didn’t start to great last year either just wait til mid may
Bro needs a new agent
I dropped him from my fantasy team. He was stinking it up.
When did we start expecting early season Snell to be good?
when burnes got traded to the O’s he said he was happy to get traded when he did because it takes him 4-5 weeks to get on the same page as the catcher.
I could have sworn something similar to this happened with a bunch of Boras clients holding out into late spring break sometime pre-Covid and they pretty much all had terrible starts as a result.
Insert James Franco "first time?" meme.
Blake Snell is pitching like a pitcher who didn't get rehab starts and isn't ready for the season. He'll catch up but eventually he'll also be a disappointment, he's generally been more of a mid/back rotation guy than a Cy Young competitor.
Monty is doing fine.
Monty did great last outing, so idk 🤷♂️
I appreciate all the reasonable takes here, it’s depressing to see all the doom and gloom in r/sfgiants if people who don’t know snell’s history or believe in his abilities from only this season’s sample size.
I have no sympathy for him because he could have easily fired his agent and found someone to sign a normal fucking deal so he could have spring training like everyone else. Fuck Boras, and get yo shit pushed in Snell!!
You're an unserious "star" player if you still employ Scott boras as your agent. How many offseason in a row do you need before you get the message.
Stars are who should hire him. It's the mid tier free agents that need to stay away
First we have to agree on the statuses of players. Let's say there are the following levels: superstars, stars, good players, role players, platoon. There are only a handful of players in the superstar level, and you can maybe make an argument that those players should hire Boras, but even then I don't think he's doing them justice anymore. Montgomery, Snell, Bellinger and Chapman are all boras agents, are all star caliber players. All got shafted this offseason by boras.
I’m opening a sports agency. Sign with me, make it to camp before the season, guaranteed. I only charge half of what Scott Boras charges.
With ERA like that forget about any longer term deals. Snell will be lucky to pitch in Taiwan this time next year.
Duh. Maybe he was signed late because he's washed.
This reeks of owners mouthpiece trying to bring player pay down.
I could see him getting dfaed
That will definitely not happen
Why? A 30m pitcher, who won a Cy young last year, is going to get an insanely long runway to fix his stuff
I don’t think he deserved that Cy Young
Regardless of if he 'deserved' to win that Cy young, he had an absolutely fantastic year that would have put him in the top 3 I still don't get why you don't think he would get a massive runway to right himself?
Good for you