Tampa Bay Rays: Expect a strong 2020 from Blake Snell

Here’s why Tampa Bay Rays fans should expect Blake Snell to be one of the top pitchers in 2020.

Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Blake Snell had a historic 2018, AL CY Young, winning season with a 1.89 ERA. 2019 wasn’t as hot for the lefty. He struggled with injuries for a bit and posted a 4.29 ERA in 23 starts.

Snell was actually a lot better last year than his ERA and surface numbers show. That’s the reason you should still expect Snell to once again be one of the most elite pitchers going forward.

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As far as pure domination over hitters, Snell was still among the best. He increased his K/9 from 11.01 in 2018 to 12.36 in 2019, which ranked 3rd in the MLB among pitchers with a minimum of 100 IP.

Snell generated swings and misses more often than any other starter in 2019 with a 17.7% SWSTR% (Swinging strike%) and hitters made contact the least often against Snell with a 63.7% Contact%.

Well if all these numbers improved then why was Snell worse in 2019? Most likely due to being unlucky on balls in play and home runs. Hitters batted .240 against Snell, yet his expected BAA was .205. That difference of .036 was the largest in the MLB.

BABIP against Snell was .343 compared to .241 in 2018. That is probably the biggest difference maker between the two seasons.

The other thing that hurt Snell was giving up more home runs. His HR/FB% went up from 10.7% in 2018 to 15.4%, yet he generated fly-balls at just about the same rate (36.4%-36.3%) and he gave up hard contactless in 2019. His hard contact% dropped from 35.7% to 34.8%.

Giving up more homers while generating weaker contact and the same amount of fly-balls has to be mostly accounted for with unluckiness or possibly the balls being juiced. This is the type of thing that will come down for Snell in the future and will help those surface numbers look more like a top ace.

Overall he was just better than his numbers showed last year.

2019 MLB Ranks (MIN. 100 IP)

• ERA: 4.29 (68th)
• xERA: 3.02 (6th)
• FIP: 3.32 (13th)
• xFIP: 3.31 (10th)
• SIERA: 3.56 (12th)

Here you can see how all his ERA estimators are among the best in the MLB, except for his actual ERA. It’s not a coincidence that all four of the other predictors are around the same level. It’s because that is the level Blake Snell really pitched at, and his actual ERA was unfortunately largely inflated.

Considering all of these numbers and the fact that Snell actually got even better at striking batters out last year, there is no reason for him to not once again show why he is one of the best when he returns to the mound again. You should expect nothing but more dominance from Blake Snell in 2020.