What Went Wrong for Ian Snell Tonight?

To put it simply, he couldn’t throw strikes. Yes, he did get squeezed a little bit, but that doesn’t change the fact that he had no command whatsoever. In his 1 1/3 innings of work, he threw 60 pitches – 27 of them for strikes. Of those 60 pitches, 47 of them were fastballs. 78% of his pitches were fastballs, and only 45 percent of those were strikes.

So despite the fact that he was throwing strikes with his fastball less than half of the time, he kept throwing it. He only had slightly more command of his off speed pitches, but it’s still a little bit baffling. With a situation like that, most of the blame belongs to Snell, because he couldn’t throw strikes, but you also have to wonder why Rob Johnson kept calling the fastball. Did he call other pitches, and Snell just shook him off? I doubt it. The fact is, Rob Johnson gets way too much credit for being able to call a good game. I’ve seen no evidence that he’s any better at it than Johjima, and tonight just reinforces my opinion. He also really needs to learn how to block the plate.

Alright, so part of the blame belongs to Snell, part of it belongs to Johnson, but I need to give the ump some credit here. At least a little bit of the blame should belong to him! He absolutely would not give Snell anything in the bottom of the zone, shown by this Pat Burrell walk in the first.

So, yeah. Robot umpires please. Pardon my French, but fuck tradition, this is getting out of hand.

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