SAN FRANCISCO — The data is public and free. It flashes on the scoreboard with every pitch.
The San Francisco Giants’ Blake Snell was ripping curveballs with an average spin rate of 2,501 revolutions per minute Monday night. The pitch featured as much as 57 inches of vertical break. His average fastball, which exploded out of his hand at 97 mph, fought gravity to a near stalemate. It dipped just 12 inches on its way to the plate.
The Atlanta Braves’ Chris Sale was flinging impossible sliders with inches of vertical movement and came from a sidearm release point that hitters seldom see (5.11 feet above the slab, if you must know). The pitch bore onto the back foot of right-handed hitters with seemingly malevolent intent. He spun it as fast as 2,442 revolutions per minute. It was a secondary offering in name only. He threw his slider 63 times out of 107 pitches.
Design is a precursor to form and form can be beautiful to behold. But when facing major-league hitters, the only thing that matters is how a pitch functions.
So to understand the dominance on display Monday night at the Giants’ waterfront ballpark, to appreciate the suffocating pitching duel that played out in front of 30,184 fans, to properly unpack stuff so toxic that the job requires safety goggles and decontamination protocols, you didn’t need to break down the data that described what Snell and Sale threw. You didn’t need to measure their movement. You merely had to witness the swings their pitches produced.
Or, rather, coerced.
Checked swings. Bail-out swings. Emergency swings. Clueless swings. Half-hearted swings. Overly aggressive just in case I actually hit it swings. Maybe even a few resigned, just let me get this at-bat over with swings.
Sale struck out 12 in seven shutout innings. Snell, who took yet another no-hit bid into the seventh, struck out 11 in 6 1/3 shutout innings. Their 23 strikeouts were the most by two starting pitchers in a game in the 25-year history of the Giants’ ballpark in China Basin. The only other time two opposing starters recorded double-digit strikeouts here was in 2010, when Tim Lincecum (11) and the Phillies’ Cole Hamels (10) put on a pitching exhibition.
It wouldn’t be reckless to categorize Monday night’s game as one of the greatest pitching duels in seven decades of Major League Baseball in San Francisco.
Not the greatest. But on the shortlist.
BlaKKKKKKKKKKKe Snell was rolling again tonight 🔥
6.1 IP | 2 H | 0 R | 3 BB | 11 K pic.twitter.com/yFXU7VendZ
— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) August 13, 2024
You might recall an afternoon here in 2012 when the Giants’ Matt Cain threw nine shutout innings and his opposite number, Phillies left-hander Cliff Lee, outdistanced him while taking his shutout through the 10th — becoming the last major-league pitcher to record 30 outs in a start — before the Giants won 1-0 in 11 innings. And of course, if you turn the dial back a few more decades, you’ll arrive at the iconic Milwaukee Braves-Giants game in 1963 at Candlestick Park when Juan Marichal and Warren Spahn matched zeroes until the 16th inning. The Giants finally won when Willie Mays coaxed a pitch over the fence and sent everyone staggering home.
The proceedings had a similar feel Monday night, even if it only took until the 10th inning to settle accounts. Neither team had a force of nature as ebullient as Mays. Instead, they had something far less soulful and far more practical: an automatic runner at second base.
The Braves won 1-0 because they scored their runner in the 10th inning on a sacrifice fly and the Giants could not follow suit. Yastrzemski and rookie Marco Luciano struck out against Braves closer Raisel Iglesias and then Patrick Bailey hit a flare to left field where former teammate Jorge Soler, strictly a designated hitter during his four disappointing months as a Giant, made the proper read to catch it for the final out.
The result, apart from widening their deficit to 2 1/2 games behind Atlanta for the third and final NL wild card, demonstrated why both the Braves and Giants believe so fervently that they could be a factor in October if they can punch their way to a spot in the tournament. The Braves, for all their offensive inconsistency, have Sale, Max Fried and Reynaldo López lined up to pitch in a postseason series. The Giants, for all their offensive inconsistency, have Snell, Logan Webb and Robbie Ray.
No wonder there were some serious Game 1 vibes in the ballpark Monday night.
“That’s a playoff game right there,” Giants right fielder Mike Yastrzemski said. “The atmosphere was great. It was two teams who are capable of being in the playoffs going at it. We’ll have to play a lot of these games going forward. You’re going to have to fight and claw for every win from this point on. So this is probably good for us. It’s a good experience for a lot of these guys who are playing meaningful games for the first time.
“It’s also important to feel the emotions of being on the wrong side of it. … We’ve got a lot of important games to go. So to lose one in that fashion could end up benefiting us. Because you don’t want to have that feeling again.”
Yastrzemski is too level-headed to give in to delusion. Obviously, the Giants did not benefit from losing a game to the primary target they are attempting to chase down in the wild-card standings. Losing Monday night means that the Giants must win two of the final three against the Braves to clinch the season series and hold what could be a significant tiebreaker.
But nothing forces a hitter to consider alternate perspectives quite like facing the leading NL Cy Young Award candidate at the top of his game. Sale was so overwhelming that the Giants could take a night off from fretting over their continued lack of success in situational at-bats, dwelling on the lineup deficiencies that they are seeking to overcome or wondering whether a shutout loss hints that they won’t be equal to the task of supporting a potentially strong postseason rotation.
It’s not easy to tip your cap. This was a night when doing so might have felt a bit liberating.
“It’s not like we did anything wrong,” Yastrzemski said. “Once we can get away from the emotion and understand there’s not much we really could have done, then you can accept it and move on.”
The Giants’ best chance against Sale came in the first inning when Tyler Fitzgerald hit a blooper that fell in center field for a two-base error. Mark Canha dribbled a single that didn’t advance the runner. Sale responded by retiring the next three batters, striking out the first two. The Giants didn’t get another runner into scoring position until the seventh, when Yastrzemski hit a two-out single up the middle and stole second base. (It didn’t help when Luciano made a mental mistake in the fifth inning and slowed up down the first-base line when third baseman Austin Riley smothered instead of cleanly catching a line drive. Luciano was thrown out by a step.)
When Casey Schmitt managed to scorch one off Sale, the pitcher snagged the line drive like it was a slap shot from the blue line.
The reflexes 👌#BravesCountry pic.twitter.com/0cH7wdVn3S
— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) August 13, 2024
Snell, who threw a no-hitter two starts ago at Cincinnati, was even better. He stranded three walks in six shutout innings and took the mound for the seventh having thrown 98 pitches. Marcell Ozuna dug out an ankle-high curveball for a leadoff double to give the Braves their first hit, then Matt Olson reached on a dribbler to the left side. Snell reached back for something extra while striking out Orlando Arcia with a 97 mph fastball on his 114th pitch of the night — tied for the second most in his career and matching the number he threw in his no-hitter against the Reds. Then Snell cheered from the dugout as right-hander Randy Rodriguez located some of his filthiest stuff while striking out the next two batters and stranding both runners.
“Felt good, got an extra day, so that played into it,” Snell said of throwing 114 pitches for the second time in three starts. “I just know I’ve got to try to last longer than him to give us a good opportunity to win. He went seven and that’s probably why they won the game. You’re always competing against the other starter to go as deep as you can.”
Very few pitchers can match what Snell has provided the Giants over the past month. His 45 strikeouts over his past four starts are the second most by a Giants pitcher over any four-start span in franchise history. Only John “The Count” Montefusco, who fanned 46 in four starts in 1975, amassed more. Snell hasn’t allowed more than four hits in any of his last seven starts. He has a 0.99 ERA and a .097 opponent’s batting average over those seven starts.
It’s resembling the run he put together in the second half last season for the San Diego Padres, which propelled him to the NL Cy Young Award.
“I think it’s a little better, actually,” said Giants manager Bob Melvin, who was Snell’s skipper with the Padres last season. “Because it feels like he’s got a no-hitter going almost every game. And there’s the strikeouts on top of it, with the mix of pitches including usage of the curveball. It’s every bit as good, if not better.”
Snell was asked if he heard the ovation from Giants fans as he walked off the mound. He said he did, but he didn’t necessarily interpret their energy as directed at him.
“They feel what we feel,” Snell said. “We want to make it to the playoffs. I believe we’re gonna. I believe that the fans do, too. We’ve got a good pitching staff, we’ve got a good team, a good bullpen. There’s no reason we can’t do it. We have all the teams in front of us we need to play to get in. We need to keep winning and I believe we’re going to do it. That’s why they’re showing up and they’re excited like we are.”
All of this might have played out differently at the July 30 trade deadline if contending teams had been willing to do what then-Giants GM Brian Sabean did in 2011, when he dealt top pitching prospect Zack Wheeler to the Mets for a two-month rental of outfielder and decorated postseason performer Carlos Beltrán. The trade didn’t work out for the Giants; Beltrán couldn’t play through a hand injury and their offense was too meager to give them a postseason shot at becoming back-to-back World Series champions. Wheeler, of course, went on to become one of the league’s top pitchers. But in truth, there wasn’t a whole lot for Sabean to regret. Wheeler spent most of his first six years of service time with the Mets either on the injured list or struggling to compete through injuries. He didn’t become a rotation ace until after he qualified for free agency.
If a contending team last month had offered the 2024 equivalent of Wheeler for Snell, there would have been an excellent chance that Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi would have viewed it as executive malpractice to say no.
Snell remained with the Giants because Zaidi and the ownership group believe this pitching staff, as presently constituted, can make a legitimate run at a wild-card spot. But Snell also remained with the Giants because baseball executives are far more risk-averse and far less bold than they used to be.
As much as it must have encouraged Braves fans to watch Sale and two relievers outlast an ace on the top of his game Monday night, how much more encouraged would they be if Sale and Snell were pitching on back-to-back nights in their rotation? Or how would Orioles fans have felt about Corbin Burnes followed by Snell? Or adding Snell to the Yankees rotation? Or the Astros? Or even back with the Padres?
As it turned out, the Giants did not receive any offers for Snell they valued more than a moonshot opportunity to play baseball in October. They’ve played well enough over the past four series against sub-.500 opponents to turn that moonshot into a fighting chance.
They can feel secure in this knowledge: For however long they can send Snell to the mound, the pitcher on the other side is not likely to be his equal.
(Photo of Blake Snell: Lachlan Cunningham / Getty Images)
