SAN DIEGO — The Rays excel at developing plans that maintain flexibility, even when asking for something a little outside the norm.
They’ve come this far asking players for buy-in, and encouraging them from the moment they join the club to accept fluidity, be it in role, usage or just handling the circumstances thrown in their direction. They plug holes this way, develop their spectacular depth this way, and vanquished a division foe bearing not one but two $300 million contracts that way.
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So when they sent their former Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell to the mound for the opening game of the American League Championship Series, they pushed him for something a little outside the norm. Their pitching plan, so pivotal not just to the first game but to the status of their entire staff this series, wasn’t executed perfectly. But it was enough, as the Rays shuffled, bullpenned and clenched their way through to a 2-1 series-opening victory at Petco Park.
The Rays have been as in tune as any organization in using the numbers to drive some of their pitching decisions. They pioneered the regular use of “the opener” as a means of pushing off the inevitable tax nearly every pitcher pays in facing an opposing batter for the third or fourth time in a game. They’ve been similarly careful with Snell — since elbow surgery interrupted his 2019 season, he has yet to reach the sixth-inning mark in a start and has topped 100 pitches just three times.
But the circumstances required flexibility. The club’s top relievers — a trio of hard-throwing, consummate Rays finds in Nick Anderson, Pete Fairbanks and Diego Castillo — all had been burned extensively in the ALDS-clinching Game 5 against the Yankees just two days ago in this same ballpark. That game likely limited one of the club’s top starters, Tyler Glasnow, to pitching in Game 3 of this series at the earliest, something that would require a second consecutive outing operating on short rest. Given the perils of cramming an expanded postseason field into a wonky pandemic season, the Rays and manager Kevin Cash were staring down the possibility of a seven-game series with zero off days.
They tasked Snell not just to keep the Rays in it, but also to go deep. Snell and Cash preached about inducing early soft contact, in defanging the Houston lineup not through chase-and-whiffs but in using their advanced ability to make contact against them.
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That would require a shift in approach. No qualified pitcher in baseball required more pitches thrown per plate appearance than Snell (4.30) this short season. The Astros are fresh off bashing the ball at Dodger Stadium in a way that was reminiscent of years prior — and of the cheating scandal that commands the tenor of this and every postseason series involving them.
Snell’s sixth pitch was scalded to Mike Brosseau at third. His 10th, to former AL MVP José Altuve, left the ballpark. It took 29 pitches for Snell to escape the first inning, and dancing through a series of near-fatal foul balls — Alex Bregman, albeit briefly, appeared to launch the Astros further ahead with a laced foul fall that would’ve caromed around the Western Metal Supply Co. building had it spun back into play — to keep the Rays in the game. He nibbled, unable to get the typical whiffs as the Astros again built up his pitch count. In the fourth, a hard-hit line drive was laced for a double play as Snell worked yet another inning that approached 30 pitches.
That could’ve ended his game. Under different circumstances, Cash acknowledged, it probably would have.
“It definitely played a factor,” Cash said. “Given a fresh bullpen, maybe we go a different route. We needed Blake to step up … he made some big, big pitches. Every pitch mattered.”
Few clubs have allowed their pitchers to face that third-time-through tax less often than Tampa Bay. During the 60-game regular season a rotation that included the likes of Snell, Charlie Morton and Glasnow faced just 157 batters a third time, with Toronto and Atlanta the only playoff teams to face fewer. Snell himself had faced just 23 during the regular season, and just six thus far through two rounds of the postseason. He had the challenge of knocking out the three top hitters in the Astros’ order — George Springer, Altuve and Michael Brantley — and do so with a pitch count already sitting at 85 through four innings.
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Springer ran a full count before striking out on eight pitches. So did Altuve, before grounding out. So did Brantley before he, too, grounded out. A 1-2-3, 20-pitch inning opened the door for the pitching plan to continue and allowed the Rays to escape through the final 26 outs Sunday night allowing no more than the one run. They did so while only asking five outs and 17 pitches of one of their top relievers, Castillo.
A midgame adjustment saw Snell attack the strike zone more fervently, to not test home-plate umpire Manny Gonzalez’s trigger on strike calls and trust his own stuff. He and catcher Mike Zunino shuffled through attack plans as often as they shuffled through sign sequences.
“I think we were close to using all our digits today,” Zunino quipped.
Snell’s slider started to miss bats. The game opened up enough for him to make it through before the latest example of the Rays’ run-prevention tightrope act.
Cash patched together a pitching group that, in typical Rays fashion, included a pitcher cut twice last year before mid-June, John Curtiss; a submarine-throwing former minor-league Rule 5 pick turned opener extraordinaire pitching against his former club, Ryan Thompson; and a journeyman lefty pitching in his first game in 12 days, Aaron Loup, before Castillo entered with the bases loaded in the eighth. He required just one pitch to get out of it before a scoreless ninth.
That group finds itself in strong shape heading into Morton’s normal-rest start in Game 2, and the potential for Glasnow on short rest in Game 3. The pitching plan worked, largely because of Snell.
“They worked Blake, didn’t chase much, and obviously we know they don’t strike out too much,” said Zunino, whose go-ahead hit in the fifth held as the deciding blow, “but to be able to hand the ball over to those guys and then continue to put up zeroes … that’s the stuff that may go overlooked sometimes, but that’s the definition of an ace there.
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“Whether guys are on your stuff or really being patient, he got us as deep as he could, ran his pitch count up and gave us a chance.”
Snell was not dominant Sunday. There were times when it wasn’t even certain he looked effective. His 105 pitches with just two strikeouts were the fewest for any postseason game since 2012, when Chris Carpenter and Kyle Lohse did so a week apart. But Snell did his job, even with the challenge.
“I knew I had to do the best I could to get us headed in the right direction, I was aware of that,” Snell said. “But there was no, like, pressing myself to do so. I was just competing with myself and (finding) a way to … limit the damage, limit the runs and find a way to just go as deep as I could.
“I think the biggest thing is just I’m well aware of what I’m doing, how I’m doing it, and what I need to do to be better. … I’ve just gotten to a place where I’m very comfortable with good or bad, knowing that each pitch is my best pitch at that moment.”
(Top photo: Alex Trautwig / MLB Photos via Getty Images)