Blake Snell, Pitch by Pitch: NLCS Game 3 Analysis

Jake Bauers saw all four of Blake Snell’s pitch types in the seventh inning. He fouled off five two-strike pitches, surviving sliders, a curveball, changeups and fastballs before driving the 11th offering, a 97.8 mph four-seamer, 412 feet to right field. The two-run home run moved Milwaukee ahead of Los Angeles.

Snell had entered the inning with nine strikeouts, 81 pitches and a 2–1 lead. A seven-pitch walk to Andrew Vaughn put the tying run aboard, with Christian Yelich entering as a pinch-runner. Bauers’ homer and Garrett Mitchell’s following home run changed a strong six-inning stretch into four earned runs charged to Snell in the Brewers’ eventual 6–2 Game 3 win.

The official line is six innings, four hits, four runs, two walks and nine strikeouts on 101 pitches. He faced three hitters in the seventh without recording an out, so those 20 pitches belong in the workload record even though his innings total remains 6.0. The baseline is 741 physical pitches in nine regular-season Dodgers starts, May 9 through September 26.

More speed and genuine swing-and-miss

Snell threw 45 four-seamers, 26 curveballs, 19 changeups and 11 sliders. The fastball accounted for 44.6% of his pitches, down from 49.5% in the baseline, while the curve rose from 21.9% to 25.7%. Changeup and slider shares stayed comparatively close to their regular-season levels. The result came from a familiar four-pitch repertoire rather than the introduction of a new classification.

The four-seamer averaged 97.3 mph, compared with 96.0 during the season sample. Its induced vertical break averaged 19.3 inches against 18.7. Hitters missed 12 of 26 attempts at the fastball, a 46.2% whiff rate, compared with 23.0% in the baseline. The extra speed accompanied a real concentration of missed swings.

His curveball averaged 82.2 mph against 79.9 and supplied seven called strikes. Hitters attempted swings at only four curves and missed three. That small swing sample describes a pitch that also did useful work when taken. Overall, Snell collected 19 misses in 45 attempts and 18 called strikes.

A fourth-inning ABS challenge changed the final call against Mitchell to a called strike and completed a strikeout. The ledger uses the corrected call once, retaining the challenge flag. It does not add a second physical pitch for the review.

An 11-pitch confrontation changed the start

Jackson Chourio hit Snell’s first pitch, a 97.6 mph four-seamer, for a home run. Snell then worked through six innings with only one additional hit allowed. After Cooper Pratt’s second-inning single, he retired 14 consecutive hitters before Vaughn opened the seventh with a walk.

Bauers ended his long plate appearance at 109.4 mph off the bat. Mitchell then hit a 1–0 changeup at 111.5 mph for a 428-foot home run. Those two drives and Chourio’s opening homer produced all four runs charged to Snell. Six of the 13 balls put into play against him were hard-hit, with a 94.2 mph average exit velocity.

The seventh did not show an obvious drop in four-seam speed: his seven fastballs averaged 97.3 mph, close to the 97.4 average on three in the sixth and the outing’s overall figure. The damaging contact therefore cannot be explained simply by saying his velocity disappeared. Bauers extended the count and eventually hit a fastball near the middle of the recorded zone, while Mitchell punished a different pitch.

Snell’s start combined a strong ability to miss bats with three costly airborne contacts. His 42.2% overall whiff rate and nine strikeouts explain why Milwaukee struggled for long stretches. The three home runs explain why that advantage did not protect the lead. A future outing would test whether the faster repertoire can retain its misses while avoiding those damaging finishes.