Breaking Blake: How Brewers Batters Will Try to Get to Dodgers Ace Blake Snell in Game 1

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Eric Hartline-Imagn Images

The National League Championship Series gets underway Monday night, and we can pretty well guess who will step into the batter's box first for each team: Super-duperstar Shohei Ohtani, in the top half of the first inning, and budding Brewers stud Jackson Chourio in the bottom half. Ohtani is the full-time leadoff hitter for the defending World Series champions, but Chourio's expected place is a response to the matchup the Brewers face in Game 1. Two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell will toe the rubber for the Dodgers, which will invite Pat Murphy to set his lineup to attack a lefty; that means Chourio first.

Obviously, though, any questions about how well the Brewers will perform against Snell run much deeper than who will bat where. When facing one of the best pitchers in the sport, it's a matter of finding the one pitch with which you can do something productive; working to get that pitch; and getting off a good swing when you do. That makes it sound easy, but of course, it's overwhelmingly difficult. If it weren't, Snell wouldn't own a 3.15 career ERA or a 2.92 mark in the postseason.

So, how can the Brewers get their hits against Snell? To answer that, let's take a closer look at his stuff. 

Snell is a high-slot lefty with a high-riding four-seam fastball, which he locates best to the glove side of the plate—up and in on righties, up and away from lefties. That's the most important thing to know, because with his array of secondary stuff, the best way to hit him (if you can) is to hit his fastball. Get on top of it, and hit a hard line drive somewhere. That's easier said than done, though. He sits around 95 miles per hour with the pitch, and when it ticks up to 97, it can be almost invisible in that top half of the zone. 

Funnily enough, the Brewers batter who might be best equipped to handle Snell's heater is Sal Frelick, who (being left-handed and lacking high-end bat speed) was probably not the first player who sprang to mind for you. Frelick has flattened his bat path this year, which has helped him hit clean line drives on a lot of pitches in the upper third of the zone, even including ones with the shape and speed of Snell's fastball from fellow lefties.

When he's going right, this is also a pitch shape against which Joey Ortiz thrives. To say the least, Ortiz is not going well right now, but nonetheless, he might surprise you in Game 1 by driving a ball to the gap off a high fastball from Snell. Here he is doing so against Dodgers reliever Alex Vesia, back in July, when his swing was as good as it got all year:

Finally, there's Christian Yelich, who has made a lot of money in his career by hitting an undefendable single the other way when pitchers throw him that fastball up and away. It might be wise for the Brewers to move Yelich and Frelick up into the top four of the batting order for Games 1 and 5, dropping Brice Turang down to sixth; Turang doesn't handle Snell's profile well at all.

There, alas, the good news essentially ends for the Brewers against Snell's heat. William Contreras needs the heater to get out over the plate to do damage on it at the height where Snell works. Andrew Vaughn needs him to miss down, in that middle-in pocket of the zone, and Snell is an expert in not missing there. Chourio will get his hits on Snell on the changeup, if at all; he only manages to foul off that high, riding heater from lefties.

When pitching to lefty batters, Snell relies heavily on the fastball and his slider, with which he wears out the area right near the knees on the outside corner. Look for him to lean hard on that pitch to Yelich and Frelick, in particular, since they handle his type of fastball well. Yelich just needs to lay off those sliders to have success. Frelick, who isn't great at laying off once he gears up to hit that heater up and away, might end up hitting one or two of his signature dribblers past the mound, toward shortstop. If he does have to hit the slider, it'll probably be a hideous swing and weak contact, but there's a decent chance for an infield single. Turang, with his ever-evolving swing, has actually become slightly more vulnerable to this pitch mix lately; this really isn't a good matchup for him on any front.

To righties, Snell is more varied. The fastball can set up either his sharp-breaking curveball, down at the bottom of (and below) the zone, or the changeup fading hard toward the outside corner at the knees. The movement on all of these non-fastballs is fairly extreme, and one good approach for almost every Brewers batter will be patience. Snell relies on chases, especially because catcher Will Smith is a poor pitch-framer. The very patient Brewers need to work deep counts, draw a few walks and try to leverage their dangerous two-strike approach with Snell on the bump. That will also help them get him out of the game as soon as possible, so they can attack the weakness of the Dodgers roster: their middle relief corps.

That curve will vex Vaughn, Contreras and Chourio, but it could be how two of the Crew's lesser righties find their way on base against Snell. This is a chance, despite Snell's good command, for Caleb Durbin to get in the way of a ball. He's good at getting hit by pitches, and Snell might just throw him a backfoot breaking ball that Durbin can make literally so. The shape of that breaker also seems to suite Blake Perkins well. In fact, Perkins even dropped the bat head on a low-and-in Snell curveball last September, while the lefty was with the Giants, scorching it into the corner for a double.

Perkins also does well on the kind of changeup Snell throws: more run than depth, well-aimed at the lower outside corner. He's patient when it fades off the plate, and good at touching it (usually just putting it on the infield, but in ways that invite chaos) when it stays in the zone. That change is the defining pitch for Snell to righties, and while Perkins might be able to scrap and battle against it, the guy who has a chance to do real damage on it is Chourio. Even when a lefty executes well with the change, if it stays on the plate, he can hammer it to right field. We've seen it plenty of times.

As great as Snell is, the Brewers have a lineup that can give him (and the defense behind him) a long night. The Dodgers enter this series heavily favored, but that's partially because much of the baseball world still doesn't understand just how good this Milwaukee offense is. Beginning Monday night, that could change in a hurry.

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[Brian]

The plan didn't work so well yesterday.