When Blake Snell signed with the Dodgers last December, he said he wanted to pitch in big games. The results in those big games so far have been magnificent, winning all three postseason starts so far this year, with his Game 1 gem Monday night to open the NLCS the best one yet.
Going out to the mound and back to the dugout eight different times, Snell ran a 10-K in Game 1, striking out double-digits for the first time in his 14 career postseason starts. He had five previous starts with exactly nine
strikeouts, including his first two starts for the Dodgers this year, in the wild card round and NLDS Game 2.
Snell has a 2.58 ERA in 69 2/3 postseason innings, with 89 strikeouts, and a 7-3 record, including wins in each of his last five postseason starts dating back to 2022.
“The deeper you go into the postseason, the more that doubt will creep in, or he was good against this team but
not. Like there’s always going to be someone to say — there’s always a way to find a flaw in something. And it will
be said,” Snell told reporters after the game. “Postseason, if you dominate and you do great, no one can say anything.”
Snell retired 23 of his 24 batters faced on Monday, and picked off the only runner who reached base — Caleb Durbin, who singled to open the third inning. That meant Snell faced the minimum 24 batters to beat the Brewers. Don Larsen’s perfect game for the Yankees against the Dodgers in the 1956 World Series is the only other postseason start ever longer than six innings to face the minimum number of batters. Masahiro Tanaka also did so, but over only six innings in the 2019 ALCS for the Yankees in Houston.
Only three other Dodgers starters in the postseason have ever faced the minimum, but none were longer than four outs. Two were openers, and another involved John Tudor injuring his elbow in the second inning in Game 3 of the 1988 World Series.
Manager Dave Roberts removed Blake Snell after those eight dominant innings and 103 pitches, in part because of one of the reasons he was picked to start Game 1 in the first place — so that he’d also be available to start Game 5 five days later.
“I thought it was a tough one for me. Hadn’t been in the ninth inning, eight ups, potentially going on regular his next outing. I thought it was 50/50,” manager Dave Roberts told reporters in Milwaukee. “Roki has been throwing the baseball really well. Have a two-run lead. I felt good with Roki there.”
The Dodgers survived the decision, as Roki Sasaki was wild for the first time in relief and allowed a run in his two-out performance. Blake Treinen walked his first batter to load the bases but escaped the bases-loaded threat to preserve a one-run win.
Snell prior to this year had never completed six innings in any of his 11 postseason starts, with the most famous example getting pulled in the sixth inning of Game 6 of the 2020 World Series, a game the Dodgers ended up winning to clinch a championship.
But now, Snell has gone at least six innings in all three starts — he hasn’t allowed a run in the first six innings in any of his three starts this postseason. The Dodgers rotation as a whole has been spectacular, with six starts of at least six innings through seven games this postseason, including one each by Shohei Ohtani, Tyler Glasnow, and Tuesday’s Game 2 starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
In 53 postseason games from 2020-24, the Dodgers had only nine starts lasting at least six innings.
In all, Dodgers starting pitchers this postseason have a 1.65 ERA and 32.7-percent strikeout rate in 43 2/3 innings through seven games. This a group pared down to four starters in the postseason, but along with Emmet Sheehan and Clayton Kershaw provided a stable six-man rotation that stabilized the Dodgers stretch run with a 3.28 ERA and 28-percent strikeout rate in August, then a 1.97 ERA and 32.1-percent strikeout rate in September.
“Our starting pitching for the last, you guys would know more, seven, eight weeks, has been — I don’t know if you can write enough words in your stories about our starting pitching. It really has been amazing,” Freddie Freeman said after the game. “They seem to feed off each other. And as an offense we’re just doing everything we can to support them.”
