In Wednesday's game against the Angels, Snell started the game by ripping a 93-mph fastball into the knees for an 0-1 count. Wow, nice life on that one, kids. Second pitch, even faster. And even more explosion. Whoa doggie!
By the end of the evening, Ian Snell's 4-seam fastball had averaged 92.8 mph, topping at 96.5 mph.
Is that good? Here are some other pitchers whose incoming missiles clock at the very same 92.5 to 93.1 mph that Snell deployed on Wednesday:
Matt Cain - 92.5
Tim Lincecum - 92.5
Roy Halladay - 92.8
Chris Carpenter - 92.9
Brett Anderson - 92.9
Roy Oswalt - 93.1
In other words, the kid had hair on the fastball.
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And he mixed it nicely with his change/slider -- a 55-45 split is more offspeed mix than the league 60-40 average.
And his change/slider had good separation: Snell consistently throws the change-slider at 83 mph -- a picture-perfect 8-10 mph separation. When you're throwing a straight change, a delta of >10 mph is often counterproductive -- the 8-10 mph difference seems to "sell" the hitters on fastball for a longer time during the flight of the ball, or something.
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So he had a great fastball, and he mixed it a lot, and his change was theoretically a perfect pairing with it ...
.... and in 100 pitches, Ian Snell induced three (3) swings and misses.
!!!!
The other 97 were, um, not swung at and missed. I don't follow much baseball, but I think a 97% rate of not-fanning is pretty good, considering the guy with the mitt knows what's going to happen and the guy with the stick doesn't.
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=== Dr's Diagnosis: Get a Bucket List Together, Sir ===
Snell walked 5 men on Wednesday and struck out 2. That leaves him with 28 walks on the year and 21 strikeouts. You don't need us to tell you that he won't stick in the big leagues with that ratio.
And the ratio itself is not the problem: the problem is that he can't miss any bats.
And :- ) it's not missing bats itself that is the goal. It is throwing pitches in such a way that hitters do not "see" the ball off him as well as they do right now.
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=== Dr's R/X ===
As this column noted on his first office visit (prior to joining the Mariners), Ian Snell's most-comparable ML pitching twin is Gil Meche.
Meche went to KC and ran 3+ ERA's in 210+ IP for the Royals in both 2007 and 2008.
In 2008, Meche had 7.8 K, he had 2.5 BB, he had 0.8 homers, and he was one of the best pitchers in the league.
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Incidentally, Gil Meche's fastball historically averages 92.4 mph, if that sounds familiar at this point in the article.
Guess what we do, if we want to come up with a home remedy for Snell's terminal feeb-itis? We pull the Gil Meche file and ask what it was that healed Meche.
Meche started to get good in the second half of his last year with us, and the Royals completed the job when he pitched for them. Go to fangraphs.com and you'll easily spot the change in Meche's arsenal, after he got good (and before his arm gave out, this season).
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