Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I’m still trying to make sense of the unbelievable double play that got the Brewers out of a bases-loaded jam.
In today’s SI:AM:
💪 Snell’s Game 1 heroics
🔱 Mariners also win on the road
🦬 Trouble for Bills
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Snell silences the haters
Dodgers pitcher Blake Snell has heard the same two critiques his entire career: he walks too many batters and he doesn’t go deep into games. On Monday night in Milwaukee, he proved the doubters wrong on both counts and led his team to a 1–0 National League Championship Series lead over the Brewers.
Snell was untouchable. He went eight innings and struck out 10 batters without allowing a walk. The lone hit he surrendered was a single in the third inning on a soft liner by Caleb Durbin. Snell then sent Durbin back to the dugout with a pickoff. Snell went on to retire the next 16 batters he faced, making him the first pitcher to face the minimum through eight innings in a postseason since Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series.
It was an all-time great postseason pitching performance. Only four pitchers in MLB playoff history have thrown eight scoreless innings with at least 10 strikeouts and no walks (Snell, Cam Schlittler, Cliff Lee and Jake Arrieta). Snell and Larsen are the only two pitchers in postseason history to throw at least eight scoreless innings with no walks and one or fewer hits allowed. Snell is also the 10th player in postseason history (and first since Roy Halladay’s no-hitter in 2010) to allow one hit or fewer in at least eight innings of work.
Snell is one of the best starting pitchers in the majors today, but his performance in Game 1 ran counter to expectations. In his 10 postseason starts before this year, Snell had never pitched more than 5 ⅔ innings. That was in line with his regular-season performance, too. Of his 222 career starts in the regular season, Snell has only completed at least six innings 97 times (43.7% of his starts). And Snell has always struggled with walks. Even in his 2023 Cy Young season, Snell led the majors with 99 walks allowed.
But Monday was a different story. Snell was in total control, baffling Brewers hitters using mostly his changeup. He threw 103 pitches: 38 changeups, 28 fastballs, 22 curveballs and 15 sliders.
“I pitch off of what they’re telling me,” Snell said of his pitch mix. “So I just felt like they were really aggressive to a certain pitch, and it seemed to be that way. So I threw differently. But the next time I face them, if they’re more aggressive to other things, then I’ll throw the fastball more.”
As the game moved into the later innings, Snell was just toying with Brewers hitters. He needed just 14 pitches to retire the first three batters in the Milwaukee lineup in the seventh inning. Snell didn’t throw a single fastball in the inning, and nine of the 14 pitches he threw were changeups. Most pitchers fade as the game goes on, whether due to fatigue or batters’ growing familiarity with their arsenal. Snell, meanwhile, only seemed to get better the deeper he went. After Durbin’s single in the third, Snell didn’t allow another batter to put the ball in the air. His 16 straight outs included seven strikeouts and nine groundouts, only three of which had an exit velocity over 80 mph.
The Dodgers needed every bit of Snell’s brilliance to come away with the Game 1 win on the road. The Brewers deployed six different pitchers in a bullpen game and mostly held the Los Angeles offense in check (aided significantly by a preposterous 8-6-2 double play in the fourth inning that eliminated a bases-loaded threat).
L.A. is going to need more outings like Snell’s if it hopes to repeat as World Series champs. As brilliant as Snell was last night, Game 1 was also a reminder of the bullpen woes that have plagued the Dodgers for much of the season. Roki Sasaki, the 23-year-old highly touted rookie from Japan who struggled as a starter earlier in the season before emerging as the team’s closer in the playoffs, nearly blew the game in the ninth. Sasaki allowed one run on two walks and a ground-rule double before manager Dave Roberts turned to Blake Treinen for the final out. Snell was unbeatable in Game 1, but the Brewers can take some solace in the fact that the Dodgers have some very glaring weaknesses.
The best of Sports Illustrated
- The Mariners rolled past the Blue Jays in Game 2 with a tried-and-true formula Toronto still can’t solve—and now the American League Championship Series heads to Seattle, writes Tom Verducci.
- Monday’s tightly contested NLCS opener highlighted the biggest difference between the Brewers and Dodgers, as Stephanie Apstein explains.
- After two straight losses, the Bills’ deep-rooted issues are starting to surface as potential fatal flaws, according to Matt Verderame.
- The Bears aren’t perfect—and they’re certainly chaotic—but Monday’s win over the Commanders showed just how far they’ve come since last season’s dark days, Gilberto Manzano writes.
- Penn State’s bold decision to part ways with James Franklin could signal the dawn of a new era in college football’s coaching carousel, writes Bryan Fischer.
- The Sports Illustrated men’s college basketball preseason Top 25 rolls on with No. 14, where a strong returning core and a high-profile recruiting class could make this squad a legitimate title threat.
The top five…
… things I saw last night:
5. The two Knicks fans who went all out during a game of tic-tac-toe.
4. A perfect touchdown pass by Jayden Daniels.
3. Josh Naylor’s homer against the Blue Jays. (Naylor, a Toronto-area native, is the first Canadian to hit a postseason homer in Canada as a visiting player.)
2. Bijan Robinson’s 81-yard touchdown run.
1. Sal Frelick’s confusion after the bizarre double play that he started.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as SI:AM | Flawless Blake Snell Leads Dodgers to Game 1 Win Over Brewers.
