Mixing Fantasy & Reality: Snell & Reyes

Quick Look: Blake Snell

I was fairly high on Snell coming into the season, but not as high as others because I didn’t manage to get him in any league. Snell is 18 starts into his pro career with mixed results. He has a decent ERA at 3.65 and a 9.8 K/9. The bad is that he is walking 5.2 BB/9 which is the worst in the league (min 80 IP).

I went ahead and did a quick look at the lefty’s September 15 start.

• His motion is fairly normal with a 3/4 arm slot. He goes for a small little bit of an angle by landing on the 1B side of the mound.
• Fastball: 90-95 mph. Straight. It’s not flyball or groundball inducing, so doesn’t offer much of an advantage.
• Curve: 76-77 mph. Has 12-6 motion. He buried a couple in the dirt. Right now it is a chase pitch only.
• Slider: 81-84 mph. 12-6 loopy break which can go for strikes. It has the look of a hard curve. While not as highly regarded pitch as his change coming into the season (55 grades from Baseball America with his change at 60), it is getting a super high 23% swinging-strike rate.
• Changeup: 84-85 mph. Straight like his fastball, but 8 mph slower. The hitter can’t seem to pick up the speed difference from his fastball and are always ahead of it. A plus pitch.

In the game, he showed his below average MLB command. He just couldn’t pinpoint his pitches. Nothing on the edge. The pitches were either way outside or right down the middle.

Before the season, Baseball America had his control at 50 and at MLB.com it was at 45. I think he has the potential to be a #1 starter, but he has to get the walks under control (which should also increase his strikeout rate some) to reach that level.

Bonus material

Snell’s non-strike throwing performance got me thinking of his strike rate (called strikes, foul balls, swinging strikes) and how it relates to the walk rate. Of the 2016 pitchers with a minimum of 80 IP, here are the 10 pitchers with the lowest Strike% (count = 157)

Snell comes in with the 8th worst rate to go with the top BB/9. I went ahead and ran a linear correlation between the two values and they correlated decently with an R-squared of .61. The best-fit equation is:

BB/9 = -32.317*Strike%+23.573

Using the formula with Snell, his predicted BB/9 would be at 4.0 instead of 5.2. A 4.0 BB/9 is well above the 3.0 BB/9 which teams assume to be a 50 grade (average) control, but better than the 5.2 BB/9 he is currently posting.

Notes

• I am a little worried about Alex Reyes as his velocity has been trending downward from an average velocity of 96.3 mph in his first start to 95.4 mph in his last start.

It will be interesting to see how the 21-year-old holds up, especially in the postseason, as he gets near his season high in innings.

Season: IP
2013: 58
2014: 109
2015: 116
2016: 101

• Ryan Madson has the signs of an injured pitcher with fastball velocity this past week down 1.5 mph and his spin rate down 200 rpm.

I am not sure the A’s will remove him as the closer, but don’t expect him to be effective for the rest of the season.

• Most of the pre-season Masahiro Tanaka detractors were worried about a potential arm injury during the season. Well, the injury finally happened with less than two weeks to go in the season.

The Yankees announced before Thursday’s 2-0 loss to the Rays that they will skip Masahiro Tanaka’s next scheduled start after the American League’s ERA leader underwent an MRI exam that revealed a small flexor mass strain in his right forearm.

Tanaka complained of some tightness following his start on Wednesday, during which he served up a career-high four home runs in an 11-5 victory over the Rays. Tanaka’s next start was to come on Monday against the Blue Jays in Toronto.

He is probably still rosterable for his next start or two, but the injury risk will again be extended into next season. I think he will be a good investment in shallower leagues where the replacement level pitcher is better.