Lefty Blake Snell Debuts for Tampa Bay

The Rays called up left-handed pitching prospect Blake Snell from Triple-A to face the Yankees in a spot start on Saturday. Snell looked very good in his debut. Although he lasted just five innings, he yielded just two hits, one walk and zero runs. By fanning six, he maintained the ~30% strikeout rate pace he’d been keeping in the minors for the last year-plus.

Prior to his call up, he owned a 3.01 FIP and 33% strikeout rate in three Triple-A starts this season. Last year, he blew through three minor-league levels — High-A, Double-A and Triple-A — and posted a 1.41 ERA and 2.71 FIP. Snell struck out an eye-popping 31% of opposing hitters, tops among pitchers to record at least 120 minor-league innings last year.

Although his recent performance has been undeniably excellent, Snell’s ascent to the big leagues hasn’t been without hurdles. After the Rays drafted him 52nd overall way back in 2011, he pitched exclusively in Rookie ball for two years. When he finally advanced to Low-A in his third professional season, he put up an underwhelming 4.52 FIP. Most alarming of all was his ugly 16% walk rate. Snell certainly didn’t have the track record of a top pitching prospect this time two years ago.

He began to turn the corner in 2014, however, when he spun a 3.17 FIP between two levels of A-ball. Not only did he strike out an encouraging 24% of batters faced, but he also slashed his walk rate to 11%. He really turned the corner on 2015, when he shot through the Rays system by putting up one of the very best seasons in the minors.

Arsenal-wise, there’s little reason to think big-league hitters will have much more success than minor-league hitters did. His mid-90s fastball is his best pitch, and lead prospect analyst Dan Farnsworth graded his other two pitches — his slider and changeup — as at least average right now (50 on the 20-80 scale). Furthermore, he thinks they could tick up to at least plus (60) down the road. He also threw a knee-buckling curve on Saturday, giving him yet another weapon to get hitters out. Pitchers who can command more than two 60+ pitches tend to be among the best starters in baseball. Here’s what Dan said about Snell’s arsenal in his preseason writeup.

His high overhand slot might hint at a relatively straight fastball, but Snell has above-average lift on his heater. He may not produce elite pop-up or ground-ball rates, but the fastball’s velocity and movement feature plenty of potential for generating weak contact without even accounting for the influence of his solid offspeed pitches. Prior to last year, his changeup projected to be his best pitch, thrown with the same arm speed as his fastball and showing good fade. That hasn’t changed, though his breaking ball has tightened up into a potential plus or better slider with hard downward and glove-side bite, giving him three pitches with which he can get hitters out.

Snell’s clearly come a long way since his days in the low minors, and KATOH’s buying into his 2015 breakout. With a projected 4.6 WAR over the next six seasons, he ranked 63rd on KATOH’s top-100 prospect list. Among pitchers, he ranked ninth.

To put some faces to Snell’s statistical profile, let’s go ahead and generate some statistical comps for the talented lefty. I calculated a weighted Mahalanobis Distance between Snell’s 2015 season and every High-A, Double-A and Triple-A season since 1991 in which a pitcher recorded at least 350 batters faced. In the table below, you’ll find the 10 most similar seasons, ranked from most to least similar. In generating Snell’s comps, I only considered pitchers who cracked Baseball America’s top-100 list after the season in question. This is intended to act as a proxy for “good stuff,” which Snell certainly has.

Each of top four — Ed Yarnall, Mike Drumright, Kurt Ainsworth, and Anthony Reyes — fizzled in the show due to some combination of injury and ineffectiveness. Although they performed similarly to Snell in the minors, and all cracked BA’s top-100 list, they turned into pumpkins once they got to the big leagues. Nonetheless, players like Erik Bedard, Eric Milton and Bobby Jones remind us why we bother to get so excited about pitching prospects like Snell. While many fail, some wind up being pretty good. That’s just the way it is with pitching prospects. Only time will tell which path Snell will take.

As a pitching prospect who’s untested against advanced hitters, Snell’s a risky asset. But it’s becoming more and more clear that he’s among the best of those risky assets. He struck out a butt-load of batters in the minors last year and pitched even better this season. Furthermore, he has the arsenal of someone who missed a lot of bats, which suggests his minor-league success will continue in the big leagues.

Saturday was just a spot start for the 23-year-old, and the Rays optioned him back to Triple-A shortly after the game. It was a numbers crunch. But he’ll be back as soon as there’s another opening in Tampa’s rotation. Just about everything in Snell’s profile — including Saturday’s start against the Yankees — suggests he’s ready for the big leagues, and that he’s ready to embark on a fine big-league career.