June 17, 2023: Padres’ Snell continues hot streak, dominating Rays

Pitcher Blake Snell and his team, the San Diego Padres, both started off the 2023 season poorly. Both, however, were on upswings as Snell prepared to take the mound for a June 17 home game against his former team, the Tampa Bay Rays.

The game was attracting a lot of buzz, thanks to the Rays’ MLB-best record of 51-22 and the star-studded Padres’ recent success. The beautiful afternoon weather in downtown San Diego – 70 degrees Fahrenheit and clear – couldn’t have hurt, either. Not only did the estimated attendance of 43,180 on this Saturday constitute Petco Park’s stadium-record 27th sellout of the season,1 but Fox Sports had selected the Rays and Padres for a split national broadcast. The other featured game, between the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, was rained out,2 so even more eyes were tuned to San Diego.

In 2022 the Padres had reached the National League Championship Series for the first time since they won the NL pennant in 1998. After a June 6 loss to the Seattle Mariners left the ’23 Padres 28-33, San Diego had rebounded to win five of seven, pulling to within two games of .500 (33-35) by the June 16 opener of the Tampa Bay series. San Diego dropped the opener to the Rays, 6-2, however, putting the Padres three games in the red.

It was up to the steadily improving Snell to right the Padres’ ship. The 30-year-old left-hander was in his third season in San Diego. He began his career with six seasons in Tampa Bay, where he won the American League Cy Young Award in 2018 on the strength of a 1.89 ERA before being traded to the Padres in December 2020.

Bill James’s Game Score metric, on which pitchers automatically begin at 50 and earn points for each inning pitched and each strikeout but lose points for allowing runs, hits, and walks, illuminates Snell’s 2023 trajectory leading into the Tampa Bay game. Snell registered scores of 47, 31, and 41 and an ERA of 6.92 in his first three starts. He exceeded 50 in six of his next seven starts, with a high of 65 in six innings of two-run, one-hit work against the Los Angeles Dodgers on May 6.

Beginning May 31, Snell took his game to a new level. He threw six scoreless innings against the Miami Marlins (game score of 70), six more scoreless frames against the Chicago Cubs (game score of 73), and a 12-strikeout, no-walk, 3-hit seven-inning outing against the Colorado Rockies at Coors Field (game score 79). Bullpen breakdowns cost him potential wins against the Marlins and Rockies, leaving just a 2-6 record, but his ERA had dropped to 3.78. The Rays were up next.

Snell struck out the first four Tampa Bay batters he faced, and five of the first six. Fans watching Petco Park’s pitch-tracker scoreboard could not help but notice Snell’s amazing ratio of strikes to balls in the first three innings, especially considering his generous level of walks – an MLB-leading 99 – allowed in 2023.3

• First inning: 13 strikes, 4 balls.
• Second: 11 strikes, 3 balls.
• Third: 7 strikes, 1 ball.4

Snell struck out a pair of Rays each in the fourth, fifth, and sixth innings, with a single K in the third. This gave him 12 in six innings pitched. Padres manager Bob Melvin, in his postgame comments, pinpointed Snell’s command of his fastball and other types of pitches as a reason for the hurler’s success. Said Melvin, “A little bit of a hybrid curve. He threw some sliders today, another good day for his changeup – it was a little bit of a different mix. … The fastball command really sets everything else up.” According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, Snell recorded third strikes on Tampa Bay batters via fastballs (4 times), sliders (4), curveballs (3), and a changeup.5

Despite getting only two hits and three walks in those six innings, Tampa Bay was not without scoring chances. The Rays had runners in scoring position in three straight innings. In the third, Yandy Diaz hit a two-out double that just eluded Padres right fielder Fernando Tatis Jr.’s glove at the wall.

Snell issued back-to-back walks with two outs in the fourth; and an infield single, walk, fielder’s choice, and steal of second gave the Rays runners at second and third with two outs in the fifth. A fly out, strikeout, and another strikeout respectively ended these threats, preserving Snell’s scoreless outing.

Rays starter Zach Eflin, a 2012 first-round draft pick by San Diego who had signed with Tampa Bay as a free agent in December 2022 after seven seasons with the Philadelphia Phillies, entered the game with eight wins in 10 starts and a 3.28 ERA. He was nearly as effective as Snell, shutting out the Padres in five of his six innings.

The exception was the fifth, when San Diego scored twice without hitting a ball that touched down on outfield grass. With Rays third baseman Isaac Paredes playing deep, eighth-place hitter Ha-Seong Kim led off by bunting to the left side of the infield, his arms outstretched in a “safe” sign (with which first-base umpire Mike Muchlinski concurred) as he passed the first-base bag well ahead of the throw.

Trent Grisham followed with another bunt attempt but popped it up toward the mound. Usually, a bungled bunt like that becomes an easy out (and possible double play), but with Eflin charging in a few steps, he was ill-positioned when the ball sailed over his head and landed in front of incoming shortstop Wander Franco, who had no play.

Back to the top of the order, Tatis delivered San Diego’s third straight bunt, a conventional sacrifice that advanced the runners to second and third. Juan Soto lined a sacrifice fly to center, scoring Kim for a 1-0 Padres lead. Paredes, having a tough inning, bobbled Manny Machado’s soft chopper. It was ruled a hit, and Grisham scored to make it 2-0.

The final three innings belonged to the relievers. For the Rays, Shawn Armstrong pitched a one-two-three seventh and Zack Littell pitched the eighth, allowing only a leadoff walk to Soto.

For the Padres, Steven Wilson and Nick Martinez sent the Rays down in order in the seventh and eighth respectively. San Diego closer Josh Hader took over in the ninth, giving up a two-out infield single to Taylor Walls before striking out Manuel Margot to end the game.

Snell’s game score vs. Tampa Bay was 77.6 He also put up a 77 in his next start, June 22 at San Francisco, giving him five straight starts in the 70s7 (with an accompanying 0.29 ERA in the five starts). Never before in Snell’s major-league career – not even in his 2018 Cy Young season – had he strung together even four straight Game Scores of at least 70.

One end-of-season assessment noted, “The run Snell put together from June [2023] onward was remarkable. After a pedestrian first couple of months, the 6’4” hurler turned in a 1.23 ERA while fanning 35% of batters faced through his final 23 starts.”8 As a result, Snell finished with a 14-9 record and a majors-best 2.25 ERA, and the 2023 NL Cy Young Award was his.9 (Eflin, for his part, finished sixth in the 2023 AL Cy Young voting.)

By season’s end, despite the early promise, neither team had broken through to the major leagues’ top echelon. The Rays were overtaken in the season’s second half by the Baltimore Orioles. They finished second in the division and were swept by the eventual World Series champion Texas Rangers in a two-of-three opening-round playoff, outscored by an aggregate 11-1. The Padres missed the postseason altogether, despite their strong run differential.10

The lasting significance of the Rays-Padres game of June 17, 2023, would seem to be two of the season’s best pitchers displaying some of their best work on a lovely Saturday afternoon. Most fans would probably take that.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kevin Larkin and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources and photo credits

The author attended the game and also drew upon an ESPN.com online play-by-play sheet and MLB video highlights to augment his recollections of the game. He also consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information, including the box score and play-by-play.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SDN/SDN202306170.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2023/B06170SDN2023.htm

https://www.espn.com/mlb/playbyplay/_/gameId/401472083

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AmC-5FmI9c

Photo credits: Blake Snell, by Trading Card Database. Petco Park, by Alan Reifman

Notes

1 Danielle Dawson, “Padres Fans Set New Record for Sellout Games at Petco Park,” fox5sandiego.com, June 19, 2023, https://fox5sandiego.com/sports/padres/padres-fans-set-new-record-for-sellout-games-at-petco-park/. Petco Park opened at the start of the 2004 season: Tom Larwin, “April 8, 2004: Padres Walk Off in First Game at Petco Park,” SABR Games Project, https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/april-8-2004-padres-walk-first-game-petco-park/

2 Fox Sports: MLB (@foxsportsmlb), Twitter.com, June 17, 2023, https://twitter.com/MLBONFOX/status/1670174864597213184.

3 According to MLB.com, “Snell was … the MLB leader with 99 walks and nearly became the first pitcher since 2012 with 100-plus walks in a season.” Brent Maguire, “The Statistical Absurdity – and Brilliance – of Snell’s Cy Young Season,” MLB.com, November 15, 2023, https://www.mlb.com/news/blake-snell-strange-2023-season.

4 Snell’s strikes and balls were more evenly distributed in his later innings: fourth inning: 11 strikes, 11 balls; fifth: 10 strikes, 9 balls; and sixth: 8 strikes, 5 balls. Note that the strike totals include only called strikes, swings and misses, and foul balls; the eight balls put in play, which are considered strikes in the official box score, are not counted as strikes here.

5 Richard J. Marcus, “Snell Strikes Out 12 in 6 Innings as the Padres Blank the Rays 2-0,” San Diego Union-Tribune, June 17, 2023, https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/national/story/2023-06-17/snell-strikes-out-12-in-6-innings-as-the-padres-blank-the-rays-2-0.

6 Eflin’s six-inning outing, with four hits, two walks, and five strikeouts, resulted in a Game Score of 59.

7 roughly 11 percent of major-league starts in 2023 yielded a Game Score of 70 or higher, based on 531 such starts divided by 4,860 total starts (30 X 162). The total number of opportunities for starting pitchers to record a 70 Game Score or higher might not be exactly 4,860 due to rained-out games never made up and teams’ periodic use of “openers” who would pitch only one inning in a start.       

8 Tim Dierkes, Anthony Franco, and Steve Adams, “2023-24 Top 50 Free Agents With Predictions,” mlbtraderumors.com, November 6, 2023, https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2023/11/2023-24-top-50-free-agents-with-predictions.html.

9 Jesse Rogers, “Padres’ Blake Snell, Yankees’ Gerrit Cole Win Cy Young Awards,” ESPN.com, November 15, 2023,  https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/38907982/padres-blake-snell-wins-2023-nl-cy-young-award.

10 Tom Ruminski, “Padres Eliminated From Playoff Race: ‘We’re Going to Grow From This,’” thescore.com, accessed February 13, 2024, https://www.thescore.com/mlb/news/2723333.